Modest Writing Success

Several years ago, I wrote a post on my personal blog, Being and Formulating, about my “Modest Success” as a writer. It’s interesting looking back at that post and seeing what writing progress I have made since.

At that time, I had a few poetry publications and was touting the fact that my story, “Drunk Monkeys,” had won an honorary mention prize in a Writer’s Digest contest. The poetry publications were in small literary magazines (including one with photocopied pages and a hand-drawn construction paper cover), but I was, and am, still proud that any of my work has gotten published.

Although I didn’t mention it in that post, I also had a few professional articles published by that time.

I would still say my success has been modest, but I have made positive strides in the seven years since that post. In that time, I have had four short stories published and released a self-published collection of short stories, Kindred Spirits, which is temporarily unavailable pending some updates. The collection contains two of the stories, “The Day When JoAnna Cowley, Without Warning, Quits Her Job” and “There Must Be a Full Moon,” which had appeared in literary magazines, along with the aforementioned “Drunk Monkeys.”

I had also self-published a novella, which I have since pulled because I plan on doing something else with a revised and expanded version of it.

You can find a complete list of my creative writing publications here.

Although eight publications over the course of two decades doesn’t sound like much, I am proud of my modest writing achievements and hope to continue to build on that success.

Getting published is difficult. As with most writers, I have received colossally more rejections than acceptances. But rejection is part of the process. Persistence is key.

Although I find writing to be satisfying in and of itself, getting outside validation is an added bonus. However, I have to admit to getting a slightly bigger thrill out of seeing my work in an actual print journal rather than online despite the fact that there’s probably a chance for more readers with something online.