A new year, back to the grind

This year has been a fairly sucessful one for me, comparatively. Meaning, I went from being a nonpulbished unrecognized writer to winning a few awards, having a few of my things published in literary magazines and an anthology, and having a novel accepted for publication. But that doesn't mean it's time to rest and enjoy being "published."

The season of contests has begun again. And I need to get stuff ready for them. There's Irreantum's contest, which has pretty nice cash prizes but even more important, gets you a bit of name recognition in the LDS arts world. There's the Mormon Lit Blitz contest, which has been getting a lot of promotion across the LDS arts blogs, which gives you an opportunity to win a kindle but, again more important, gets your work plastered across several prominent LDS arts blogs and in an LDS arts magazine.

There's the Western Humantities Review's Utah Writers' Contest, which gets you a cash prize of 500, but most important, gets you published in a magazine where people such as Joyce Carol Oates have contriubted, and has had work nominated and selected for several literature prizes.

So, time to get myself in gear and really strike hard at my writing. I plan to read my book of forms all the way through to really nail down what I don't know about rhythm and meter. I'm going to get my poems going, revised, revised again and again, and then I'm going to submit like crazy.

Why, you might ask, am I doing all this? Isn't writing a good enough reward in itself? yes. And no. Anybody who engages in art will tell you that it's nice to have an audience. I'd write even if I never got any recognition, but having people enjoy my work, identify with it, get caught up in images I create, is the real reason for my writing. You can sing to yourself but it's so much better when someone listens and is moved by what you've worked so hard on.

So... cross your fingers for me... here goes another season of submissions.