Professionalism

"Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go." E.L. Doctorow
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There is a time for fun and a time to be professional. When submitting work from an email iliv4U@ wahooza.com, I’m sure you don’t appear like a professional to the receiving market/party.

In the writing world especially at f2k, there is a lot of fun being had by members and mentors alike. I’m wondering if they come into the course thinking, “This is a fun place.” And maybe that is why they use quirky names to register, and sometimes don’t take the guidelines and rules as serious?

To me, that is a big turn off. When I’m in the writing community, I don’t want to appear a dimbulb, I want to make the appearance of a professional and I try to relay that to the students because when they get out into the real world of submitting, and being around other professional writers, they should not have the impression that writing is just all fun, games, and chat.

Writing is about writing. Don’t get me wrong, I like to have as much fun as the next person, but there is a place and a time for fun, and there is a place and time for work. Sure you can have fun at work, but don’t make a total fool out of yourself, so that people never take you as a person who is able to be professional.

If someone were to ask me, “What do you do for fun?” I would not be able to give them an answer. I see writing and reading as fun. I see mowing the lawn as fun, watching impending storms roll over the fields as fun, stargazing, (when they’re not hidden behind the clouds of said impending storm) and spending time with my son, now that is fun.

Running around acting like a wallapalooza maniac is not my sense of fun. I take professionalism as a very serious matter. And I take other professional writers as a serious matter. I see the ones as wallapalooza’s as people that are not really getting very far in their writing, because they really don’t take it as a serious matter.

Writing is hard work. We sit for hours tapping on the keys, searching markets, sending out our work and while we’re being accepted/rejected we move forward in our career. Rejection is as much a push forward as an acceptance. Being rejected you know that it is just a matter of working harder, the same as an acceptance. The push is there to make you sit up and take notice of how serious the matter is and how serious you need to be about what it is that you love.

As a professional writer, you are allowed to have fun too, but in the right place, at the right time. Take writing as a serious profession and you will get a lot further in your aspirations.

Write Right...its what writers do. :)