It’s amazing to me just how risk averse I’ve been in writing. I’ve done quite a bit of various forms of writing over the last decade or so, but I’ve never put myself in a position to actually fail or succeed. That sucks.
Regularly, when I am on various, somewhat legitimate sites around the internet, the writing can be terrible. I think, if this is good enough to make money writing I can at least do that much! I can. And yet, while I’ve shared most of my writing on one blog or another, there was never any actual risk of failure, and thus also never any chance I might move forward occupationally speaking. I’ve grown a ton as a writer, so it hasn’t by any means been a loss, but still, I should have more to show for it.
I mentioned it the other day when I shared the five things I’ll do this year, but it’s time to fail. Time to put myself in positions where I am out of my depth or comfort zone to see if I can actually make this into something more than a pipe dream.
The trouble is, how the hell do I do that? For fiction, that’s a little easier. I can share stories with various sites that publish different forms of fiction, who pay by the word for stories they like. That’s a pretty simple way to start trying and failing.
However, where the hell do I submit work to places that are a bit like this blog? Sure, sometimes the writing here is as mediocre as the site’s name suggests, but some stuff I’ve written is actually good. So, who do I show that to in order to catch on somewhere as an actual staff writer? Or even just as a freelance writer? I know the sites must exist. Hell, I’m pretty confident I’ve actually been to them before. Yet, for the life of me I can’t recall any at the moment. I’m drawing a blank, most probably some sort of Freudian blank. Well, I’d like a little less Freud and a little more Jung thank you very much.
Any leads out there? Advice? Suggestions? Inspiration? Help me start failing in the direction of my dreams.
