Plateaus And Progress.

I rarely recognise my progress as a writer. It often feels as though I'm stuck on a plateau.

When I was living in Japan I visited home about once every eighteen months. On such trips I would comment on how much my nieces had grown. My sister was usually surprised by this, as she'd not noticed it to the same extent I had.  But then she'd been with them daily and not noticed the gradual growth.

Recently I've had to edit a piece I originally wrote a couple of years ago. Sure, it had been through a couple of rewrites since then, but I'd not read it since last year. I was amazed at how many flaws I found in the piece. Since it is slated for publication and had already been accepted (and been through an editor), I had to resist the urge to rewrite entire chunks of the story.

Don't get me wrong, I still think it's a good story. But I was able to recognise exactly how much I've learned in the past six months or so. And how my current writing has improved.

It is worth revisiting your past.

Eat Me Cake.

Do you remember that scene in Alice in Wonderland where Alice eats the cake and puts her hand on top of her head to measure her growth? Naturally, she ends up exclaiming she hasn't grown at all.

Sometimes I feel like that. I feel like I haven't improved in my writing, or that I'm no closer to pro-sale level than I was before. That's when my wife points out exactly how much I've achieved in the past couple of years.

OK, so I've made a few sales. But how close am I to the big ones? Does that personal rejection I received from a pro-market mean I will soon be selling there? And if I do, will it be regularly? (or at least more than once?) Am I like Topanga Canyon, or simply living in hope?

I think I'm improving. People I trust tell me I am. I can look back at my earlier pieces and see the flaws more obviously. And I try not to make those same mistakes again.

Sometimes I read stories in magazines and anthologies, and have trouble seeing why they were accepted in the first place. Then I wonder why my pieces were rejected from those same markets. Surely my piece was better than the ones they published.

Oh well, my day will come. We write, we submit, we write more.

(Gitte Christensen wrote a response to my Topanga Canyon post. This post started out as a comment to her.)