Keep the Fire Burning

Keep the Fire Burning C. Hope Clark entered my life 11 years ago, just when I had made a 10-year commitment to improving my writing: entering more contests, applying for more grants and submitting more applications to publishers and for artist residencies. Hope sits on my desktop every day. When I need to remember that I am not alone in this writing struggle, feeling like bursting into tears after another rejection, I open the computer document titled HOPE and my world is transformed from despair into opportunity with one simple click.    Here I find every snippet of fodder that I have carefully cut and pasted from C. Hope Clarks weekly FundsforWriters email. After doing this for several years, this document was pretty messy. One day I reorganized it: Book Publishers, Magazines, Grants, Jobs, Artist-in-Residencies, Workshops/Classes and Wisdom; perhaps the most important section because it included tips for remaining sane while striving for success. Within each category bold, italics and underline were added. I reduced the font size down to 9 and narrowed the margins so I can get more opportunities on one page. And I have developed my own style of shorthand so that each opportunity can be reduced down to just two lines if at all possible. Why? Because I learned that once the document is over 25 pages long,   it felt too cumbersome to peruse for the next opportunity. Some weeks I only do one category for the week, but about once a month I save an afternoon (usually Friday while Im waiting for her newest email to arri ve) and I read through the entire document, slowly and carefully. I use text colors to make things pop visually and for the best opportunities I add highlighting. Now I have bold, italics, bold-italics, colored text, underlines, a variety of font styles and highlighting. Deadlines passed. Offerings had to be deleted. I added a Submissions category where entries are carefully documented: fee, date, title and word count for each entry. Then the Rejected category which included any comments offered and finally my favorite; a YES/Accepted category. This list began to grow as I began to understand that writing is not a goal; writing is a process. Every week I carefully cut and pasted anything that looked appealing re: publication or growth. I asked for opinions, joined a writers group and began to teach. And I always kept the HOPE file updated every week. I sat at my computer late on Fridays waiting for the email to arrive. I learned to keep that document on my desktop because it added more kindling to my inner burning desire to write. More than a decade has gone I take Hopes email very seriously. When it has been late arriving (seldom), dinner is delayed. It is that important. Hope encourages us to dream and she gives us innumerable reasons to never give up. Happy Writing! Laura Lee Perkinswww.LauraLeePerkinsAuthor.com spiritualquest@earthlink.net