Reflection and Writing

Do you often pause and reflect about your writing life? Where you are and where you'd like to be?

It came to me a few weeks ago, that some of my writing dreams have finally become a reality, and I find myself wondering how it all happened.

You know why patience is a virtue? It's because so many of us lack it. What we want is for our writing, no matter what it is, to be published NOW. It's the waiting that stinks.

But what if we have it all wrong? I waited 8 years after writing every day, to get my first work published. It was a short snip-it, hardly an article. And in the beginning I wrote the short stuff. The short article. The short poem. The short children's story.

Photo by Kevin Lawver, courtesy of Flickr

Reflecting on my "short" start, I realize that these shorts prepared me for the "longs." Later, I published one book and then two, and then three. And after all of that, I wanted to begin my own publishing company. And so Idea Creations Press was born.

Photo by: striatic, courtesy of Flickr

I always wanted to publish books for other people, but it seemed more like a pipe dream than anything else. But I believe all the "shorts" and "longs" have prepared me for the next step. I couldn't have published a book in the beginning without first gaining the skills and determination to do so. And now that I have the skills and determination to publish I see a window opening with even more to learn.

And that's what reflection is all about.