Updates on the Writing Life
I don’t want to discuss how this is probably the last summer we’ll have both of our young adults at home (they are entering their sophomore and senior years of college). Our time with them is winding down, and while I’m sad, I’m also grateful for their desire to live out in the world on their own and reach for their personal and professional goals while in college. I can’t wait to hear about what adventures lie ahead for them in the coming school year! I’m continuing to write, podcast, read books, exercise, immerse myself in foreign language, spend time with my husband, and anything else I can think to do to keep me from missing them too much.
I’m still working on finding an agent for my suspense/thriller novel, but while I’ve had a few manuscript requests, there’s been no offer of representation. I will continue to submit while I work on a new project in the genre of book club/women’s fiction.
Some positive news on the writing front came in last week, though. I entered two essays in this year’s Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition (one in the memoirs/personal essay category, and the other in the inspirational/spiritual category) and my piece, “Behind the Red Door” received an Honorable Mention in the Personal Essay Category. While I’ve dabbled in writing creative nonfiction, I’ve never been able to crack the code and achieve publication anywhere. This is my first award for creative nonfiction.
I worked on the essay this past spring, going through many drafts, and enlisting the help of one of my writer friends who writes beautiful, award-winning essays. The essay describes my feelings when I discovered someone in our neighborhood had been arrested for child abuse and neglect (names were omitted to protect the children’s privacy), and explores my own experiences in raising children and witnessing abuse in public. It was difficult to write, and it wasn’t until I added myself into the essay rather than looking at it from the outside that I finally came away with an essay that garnered the attention of judges. My other essay, about my experience with a guardian angel back in the early 1990s, didn’t place in the contest, but I feel it’s a solid piece of work and I will continue to submit it to other publications.
Essays take much more work than people realize, and I wouldn’t have accomplished this goal without the help of many peer readers. It truly takes a village!
In other news, my friend Nicole Pyles shared my podcast episode on spooky southern colleges in this back-to-school blog post. And today, I hit publish on the 150th episode of Missing in the Carolinas. What a wild ride podcasting has been!