From my pen to the reader's eye.....

The past three posts to my blog have covered the "Big Three" rules that I learned in almost every writing class I've ever been in.  There are, naturally, a lot more things that you learn in writing classes, but I'll leave it up to you to learn from those who are paid to teach you.  The posts that I'll be writing from here on are some insights on my own experiences with writing, but your experiences may vary.....

During high school and college, I had a lot of angst that I began to express in the form of poetry, some of which written for my teachers/professors in response to an assignment, but some just to get my emotions out so that I could (hopefully) sleep at night.

I won't lie to you and say that I always got the best reviews of the work I passed in for assignment.  Sometimes there were nice comments, other times it was things like "This poem reads like a bad rock song.  I'm not sure even setting it to music would make it acceptable."  Strangely enough, the poem that got that poor review from my college professor - a piece I wrote about the death of my favorite cousin and passed in when we were asked to do something "long and sad, something of a eulogy" - was published later in a small newspaper in Fryeburg, Maine (currently available at my web site: http://galadriel_emmons.tripod.com/poems3.html).  A retired English teacher whom I had befriended called me requesting my permission to read the poem to a writing group he was leading, and when he insisted on reading the poem to me to make sure he was getting "the intended inflection of the sentence", he started to cry in the last stanza.  He called me again after he'd completed the reading for the group to tell me that he had "held it together" during the reading, but everyone was passing around tissues after he finished......

So my personal "publishing rule number one" is:  "Just because one person doesn't like it, it doesn't mean your writing isn't any good.  Try another audience."

Reactions such as the one expressed by the retired writing teacher encouraged me to continue bringing my poetry in to the little Fryeburg paper, and 99.9 % of what I brought into The Pequawket Valley News, which had a little section they called "The North Country Bard", got published.  Some of the local poetry they featured there was not to my liking, but some of it was really good stuff.

Now, for anyone who hasn't ever lived in a small town, especially one in Maine, there is a way that new people in town are labeled when they first arrive.  In my case, I was "Bill Emmons' lady friend" for a while, and when we got married and briefly moved to Florida, I became "Judy Emmons' daughter-in-law".  (Not always a nice thing when I was recognized as that, as my mother-in-law didn't seem to always be nice in her comments to her friends - but we'll delve further into that in my next post.) 

After my poems started getting published in the little weekly paper, I started being called "The Poet Lady".  At first, it was a little startling to be stopped in the middle of my grocery shopping by someone I had never met before with "Hey, I know you!  You're The Poet Lady!"  Once the initial shock wore off, however, it became very nice to have someone stop me to tell me how much they liked the last piece that was published - or to offer me ways that I could have improved it.  This public recognition became another learning tool, as it helped me to not only hear the opinions of the people who were reading my work, but it also taught me how to gracefully take constructive criticism and grow as a writer.  This would all be very important in the next step I took.....