8 Secrets I Wish I knew About Writing While I Was In High School

via flickr Creative Common License thanks 

1. Keep writing! Writing is more of a compulsion than a passion. Don't bog yourself down by holding it in. The more you write the better you will get.

2. Your writing is not perfect especially if no one else has had a chance to critique it. In my teens, I'd spend all my time writing ignoring school, friends, and family For the record, this is not a healthy way to live. While you should definitely carve out time for writing in your life, doing it at the exclusion of all else is going to close off experiences and knowledge. In retrospect, it set me up to feel like my writing had to be at a certain level just because of all the other stuff I moved to the side. No one needs that kind of pressure. Trust me, first attempts are going to flop don’t give up a good Algebra grade for it.

Don’t be more interested in arguing how good what you wrote is than listening to constructive feedback. The person reading your work is only providing input because they see something worth refining. Critiques signal that the reviewer found value in your work. Get out of your own way and be open to what people were suggesting.

The first copy you show people, no matter how polished, is STILL A DRAFT. Entering with that mind set is going to be unspeakably helpful to receiving critique and to improving your work.

3. Remember all writing is collaborative. I was and am really into Emily Dickenson and she was a hermit! She never had to speak to or be reviewed/corrected by a single soul, surely I could expect the same. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Ms. Dickenson wrote solely for herself. She never had any intention of publishing, it was only after her death that her family wanted that for her writing.

• When her work was first published someone else edited the living heck out of it so it would conform to poetic standards of the time. We read the original today, but for a long time a stranger, with no input from the author, decided what was meant by the work and how best to present it.

• Ms. Dickenson wasn't around to see her work thrive.

Dive into the community by:

• Joining a local writers' group. This will give you a group of objective people to critique your work. It will also give you a chance to be the critic. You may be more able to avoid common writing traps now that you've seen it in others' writing.

• Get a Blog. This creates a potentially worldwide presence that establishes you as a writer with experience in X style. Weekly posts will show others your discipline and commitment to your craft.

4. Start building a portfolio. Any peer reviewed, relevant final work can go into a portfolio, but it will carry more weight as a high graded paper, a contest winning work, or a published work. This will increase your community engagement, prepare you to apply for work, and help build your confidence.

• Submit a piece for publication. Check out if you school has publication opportunities. Look into magazine submissions and online posting opportunities. It is never too early to be published or to learn about the submission process. DO NOT let fear hold you back. Life will go on with either a “yes” or a “no” and there is a lot to learn from both answers.

• Submit your work to writing contests. Do a little research and make a splash in the writer's community by becoming a contest winning author!

5. Get some references/testimonials. Talk to your English teacher, writing coach, or even a peer and have them write a review for your work. Even if you are not a contest winner , a reference from a creditable person about your talent can go a long way in helping you get what you want.

It's great practice telling people what your goals are and asking them for help in getting what you want.

6. Don't let “no” scare you off. I expected everyone to just acknowledge my literary genius. Really? It was conceited. I expected all the doors to be open. Hearing “no” was particularly crushing in this context.

There are going to be a million “No's” to your writing BUT it's not a rejection of you or your talent. “No” is a business decision for that group at that time. It could mean their budget was cut, it could mean your work is right for five or six future things but not this one thing right now, or it could just mean competition was fierce and there's more work for you to do. Nobody automatically thinks an actor, dancer, or singer is bad when the hiring team says “no” to them, writing is very much the same way.

I've found going in and expecting “no” helpful. It makes me look for reasons people would say no and build arguments against it. It also makes hearing “yes” amazing while making “no” just so much background noise.

7. Be open to a lot of directions with your writing career. Career day showcases a lot of traditional career paths. How to be a police officer or a small business owner is a pretty clear to most people. Even how to be an actor, musician, singer, or novelist, while a hard path, is pretty well understood by the general populace. The options as a writer are a little more obscure.

Freelance work is really a broad and varied world. Do you want to run a blog, do you want to be a technical writer, do you want to pitch creative ads and marketing techniques, do you want to professionally write reviews, do you want to run e-courses and coaching sessions for other writers, or do you want to do something else? There are a lot of options for creative innovative aspiring writers and the formula to get there is pretty fluid.

8. Consider community college. I'm not going to say college is a waste to the aspiring writer, because it's not. I made my greatest improvements to my writing style in college. If I'd had a greater sense of purpose, I would have made some amazing networking connection in college. I'm pretty sure I have my day job because I hold a degree. College DOES earn you some things. However, what I got out of the experience does not validate the price tag for my four year degree. If I could do it all over again, I would have gone to community college and worked. I would have had less debt and would have taken advantage of more opportunities while I was there. I would have had more time and experience to learn what I needed to do to get the most from a four year degree program.

There is a lot of pressure to go to college and get a traditional 4 year away from home experience. I know the college “experience” has been elevated to an almost mythical status through our cultural narrative. Although the opportunity for education and growth may still be unparalleled by a traditional 4 year college, you have to know and take full advantage of almost every opportunity presented to you to make up for the cost.

Does your opinion differ from mine? Did I leave something out or put something horrible in the list? Leave your own advice and feedback to would be writers below!

Does Your Kid or Teen Have the Caffeine Bug?

Caffeine is not good for your child. Side effects include trouble sleeping, stomach aches, too much energy, and loss focus. While caffeine does not stunt growth, a prime reason I wasn't allowed to have caffeine as a child, it can bring with it some very empty calories and an empty pocket as well.

Your child on caffeine is bad for you! I see kids running around like a little Tasmanian devils, touching everything in reach and knocking it down , firing a million questions a minute in a voice that definitely doesn't belong inside all while pushing strangers and pulling hair. THIS is the kid you want to give coffee to?!

Saying “No” to any coffee shop drink for a child would be best. There are so many healthier still delicious things they could be doing with those calories and sugars. The CDC reported in 2011 that what we drink can effect our diets to an alarming degree. Your kid might not need to watch their weight now but please think beyond the present. You could be building bad food habits which will bite them in the future. Limiting empty sugar calories now can teach a child better habits for life.

If you do want to treat the kid: the variety of caffeine free drinks is nearly endless. Almost anything hot or cold can be made without any coffee. When you choose flavors remember decaf coffee and chocolate still have lower levels of caffeine in them. For a complete table of foods and drinks that may have caffeine please look here. For a list of shocking places you'd find caffeine check out this Sara Collins article. I had no idea oatmeal and beef jerky could have caffeine!

Your kid can have a steamed milk with thousands of different flavor combinations in it and a dollop of whipped cream on top. Lots of stores have apple juice that can be steamed to create a fun cinnamon or caramel themed apple drink.

Be wary, caffeine free drinks don't mean good for them. A coke the same size has less sugar andcalories than steamed milk with syrup. There is good news though! The milk in this drink still has all its nutrients including an excellent dose of calcium.

Older children present a whole different conundrum in the coffee shop. Teens want to be cool and drinking coffee is in vogue. I get that teens roam the stores without an adult often. You can discourage them from ordering coffee.

When you're out with your teen, don't offer to buy them a coffee. Or offer a coffee but limit how much sugar can go in. No one needs a latte with extra syrup and extra drizzle. Don't let a beginning coffee drinker make this a standard order! Encourage them to drink coffee with fewer additives. Suggest things that complement coffee's natural flavors like chocolate, cinnamon, or one of the nut flavors. Avoid making the coffee a candy bar with berry flavors, caramel, peppermint, coconut, or more than one syrup flavor.

Finally, you might point out the calories in the “treat”. Health Assist allows you to enter a weight and how many calories you want to work off and will literally tell you how long it will be to “run them off.” A lot of young ladies who think drinking a coffee will help them lose weight may be rudely awakened.

A coffee might seem like a weird place to take a stand, but it's not. Consider that your kid could be buying this regularly for the rest of his or her life. How often do you buy a coffee or drink while out? Once a month, once a week, more? Do you know how much money that is over the course of a natural human life span? Once a week at $2 each for 52 weeks is $104 in just one year. Lattes and frozen beverages, kids preferred coffee drinks run $4-$7 each, this more than doubles projected costs!

Does your teen realize how much money they are spending on coffee? A potentially eye opening exercise is to have your teen keep each coffee order receipt for a month. At the end of the month, add up all the money spent in the coffee shop. Ask your teen what else they could have bought with the money. Was being the cool kid who drinks coffee the best option?

If you must introduce kids to coffee, why not do it at home where you can control what goes in the coffee along with how much they have? Most kids aren't going to like straight coffee with a little milk and sugar. It might squelch any interest in getting a coffee from the shop when they know they don't like the home brew.

Thats' My Two Cents, I Want To Hear From You:

-Am I making too big a deal out of children drinking a coffee?

-What other suggestions would you offer to keep a kid from wanting coffee?

-Would you ever allow your child to drink a latte of some kind? Why or Why not?

-Is there a way for a barista to offer a coffee free alternative to a parent ordering a mocha for a kid without seeming rude or obnoxious?

-If you were in the coffee line and heard a parent buying a kid a coffee, would you speak up? Why or why not?

-Do you interpret the same order differently based on whether it's for a child, tween, teen, or adult?

-When are we old enough for caffeine?

Networking: Would doing it Any Other Way Seem Less Desperate?

I spent the first half hour of my morning writing session looking to network. I know zero people (I am literally a social hermit) so “social networking” involves desperately searching for people who may have common interests online. Worse thing about networking is that finding people is supposed to be the easy part. After all, there are hundreds of freelance writing groups, blogging groups, and writer support groups. I just click the join button and allow the influx of media to wash over me. This has not previously been a successful strategy for me. Maybe I pick too many groups.  Maybe they aren't the right groups. Whatever the reason, any serious attempts at networking usually result in me completely unplugging from net for months at a time.

I've done the blogging thing before. First I wrote a personal journal on livejournal.com and in the wake of the livejournal vs fanfiction / mass deleting of accounts, I left that platform and moved over to insanejournal. Doing this was awesome for my personal blog because it forced me to act and talk with the larger livejournal community and the eventual insanejournal community. For the better part of a year I had fifteen or so internet friends. The insanejournal gig couldn't last. People swapped over to dreamwidth(?) or lost interest in writing/blogging. I suppose that's around the time facebook, youtube and other new forms of social media started becoming more mainstream. I think a lot of them left or refocused their energy on these newer models. After all why write with friends when you could face to face talk? My own account slowly went dark as all the people I used to speak to winked out and I could write in a vacuum on my own pc without ever publishing.

I very briefly tried a photography business and a blog with zero success. I have some natural talent in composing shots, and my ability to edit is respectable. I have very little in the way of technical terminology or logistic advice. While my pictures are lovely and I have quite a few amazing shots, writing wise I have nothing to offer this community.

I ran a Mary Kay blog when I was trying to sell it. I wrote (and never published) more posts about how the promotion techniques were troubling, the product was limited, or how terribly these women treated other women. My puff pieces that made it on to the blog were acceptable but lacking in real heart. Also, they were way too long, instead of trying to appeal to one group, I worked on appealing to all groups in one long post—not a smart strategy. What's most surprising to me is that my three page posts somehow garnered 69 page views.

My most successful blog was a personal religious one I wrote. This one has/had a lot of potential. My networking roots were good. I was knowledgeable and passionate about the material. I wanted to reach out and participate in the community and I had some people reaching back and participating with me.

The first problem here is that I am too verbose. I wrote 5-10 page posts, and these final posts were edited down from 20-30pages all single spaced mostly a wall of text. It takes a lot commitment to write that kind of work and even more to read and respond to it. I was posting, but by the time I was getting my thoughts out, they were no longer timely.

I started to get the impression that a lot of the people I was working with were there to increase subscription and page ratings and not to discuss or actually dig into our faith. Once that thought blossomed, I could see how the language in a lot of the posts was intentionally inflammatory to force response. Even people in the scene who were bridge builders and unity champions, had posts which seemed to be there just to generate greater page hits. I might have struggled on writing my mini-novel posts, but I was too disheartened by the nature of the conversation along with the length of time it took me to respond to push on.

So present day what have I learned from previous blogging forays?

1. Keep it short 500-1000 words. This is a HUGE challenge for me.
2. Keep it current and regularly updated. I have updated daily in some of my past blog projects and they were hands down the most successful at reaching out. While I am one person and I don't want to over produce as that can be annoying on someone's feed, I also don't want to be bumped off the page views either.
3. Controversy will happen naturally. I don't need to troll internet rage to be seen, and if I do, I probably don't have anything worthwhile to say.
4. Be authentic, people have always seemed to respond well to me, and I need to trust in that.
5. Network, Network, Network! What I need is a support group of people, reading, commenting, and possibly connecting me to work. I have skills that make me a great friend to have. I'm a good editor. I'm very passionate about projects I take on, and I have diverse interests/ knowledge base to work from.
6. My base is very limited but it might be time to reach out to friends and family.

What about you? Are there any tips on how is best to network? Are there any thoughts on the best way to make friends/contacts? How do you like to reach out? What was your most successful networking experience?