Let's Just Say I Write

At some point, I guess I'll consider myself as a writer. I have been doing that for a good portion of my adult life--dating back to my days in the journalism department at Southwest Texas State University (still hurts my jaws to say Texas State). Back then, I wrote pieces for the campus newspaper and magazine.

I taught high school students how to write for their newspaper and yearbook in my journalism classes. During that time, I wrote articles for the school district's newspaper and began to try my skills at freelance writing about the subject that I knew best--blues music with an emphasis on the role of the harmonica. I've pumped out oodles of articles and music reviews over the years and I'm pretty sure that I made a grand total of $50. The blues sure could give a writer the blues. I do have have dozens upon dozens of CDs that publications considered to be my pay. Pretty positive that I really liked only about a dozen of those and haven't listened to the rest since I wrote about them.

I still never called myself a writer. Others have introduced me as such, but it hasn't been a term to which I labeled myself.

Now that I no longer have the high school teacher identity to fall back upon, lets just say that I write. If that makes me a writer, then that's okay with me. If I needed to have made oodles of money at the craft to be considered a writer in some people's mind, let's just say that I'm working at that. You might say that I've spent a good portion of my life writing in spite of the pay. Could say the same thing about my teaching career also, though.

Having written and revised my novel, which by the way is now entitled River Bottom Blues, I've been slogging through the process of trying to find an agent with the query-go-'round. Write to them and pitch the story with maybe a few pages thrown in and sit back and wait for the rejections to pile up with automated responses, such as--"Thanks, but sorry that it is not right for me", "Lovely ideas, but it doesn't fit what we want" and so on and so forth.

I've been studying up on the process of networking within the industry. Seems that maintaining a blog or a website is almost mandatory for writers and most of the blogs are aimed at writing and writers and the industry. This blog here doesn't fit that mold, but what the heck. Also, have you ever sat around on a clear night and just wondered how many billions of stars are beaming down? Well, my research indicates that there are just about that many NEW writers working at getting something published.

You know what, though? It doesn't really matter if my work gets published, because I wrote it and I like it. So, ask me what I do now and I'll tell you--I write. Call me what you want. Anyway--