IWSG Day, November 7, 2018, Tweak and Finish

Hello Everyone,

It is the first Wednesday of the month, and IWSG Time. 

IWSG is a writer support group created and led by Alex Cavanaugh. It is a big help to many of us who do not mind sharing our insecurities, our successes or giving encouragement and help to others. 

So, if you are interested and would like to join, the link below will lead you directly to us:

The Insecure Writer's Support Group 

My report:

Rejection: Glimmer Train, Very Short Fiction Story

No New Submissions this month

 Tweak and Finish

I received great feedback on my partial manuscript submitted to the NWS this year, and from Simon and Schuster too. Now, it is time to tweak and finish the manuscript in its entirety. It seems as if there is room in the literary world for me, but I will not know the earnestness until the tweaks have been made and the complete manuscript is submitted. 

Right now, I am not stressing about it. In fact, I have dived into the process with smiles on my face. If I lack anything, it is a twenty-eight-hour day instead of a twenty-four-hour day.  But the hours in my day are not going to increase so, I’m left with reprioritizing, which means giving up, or throwing out routines and schedules that are no longer profitable. In re-evaluating the dispensation of my time, I am asking myself what I need to let go of so that I can move on. These are hard decisions that bring pain because I hate goodbyes. They are changing the path of my life as I get ready to pass through the gate. 

I do know that everything changes and that nothing remains the same, but oh it is difficult to walk out this knowledge and wisdom. I stand before the gate, and like Robert Frost described so effectively in one of my favourite poems of his, I see the two roads that have emerged, and remain undaunted despite of not knowing what will happen.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Wishing all of you a lovely month of November.

Shalom aleichem,

Pat Garcia

_{*The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, originally published in 1916, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-taken}