Inspirational Writing Groups and still searching for the 'right fit' submission

Photo: Columbus Square, Canary Wharf

Recently I had the nicest rejection letter I have ever received from a magazine in the USA. I almost felt it was an acceptance! They praised one particular poem and said that they believed in the power of my writing and encouraged me to submit again in the coming months and years.

It took me a while to come down from that, yet I still struggle with this 'right fit' business. I do study magazines and choose the poem or poems I feel will sit well within it. Yet time and time again I get the same reply. It's easy to see where my poems don't fit, but much harder to find a magazine willing to publish me. It's frustrating.

Meanwhile, the writing group I've been attending for the last few years is having a break until September. The group leader has been unable to lead or attend in the past few months. Numbers have dwindled and the format of the group has not worked for me for a while.  So after the last time in which two of us just socialised there was a brief moment when I wondered whether now was the time to give up. Nothing has been working for a long time and it seemed like this was another nail in the coffin of writing.

But something changed. I had challenged myself to write a poem a day for a year and that was going quite well, but I needed inspiration, new ideas. I began searching for writing groups in my area. Nothing. I found myself on the Meet-Up website and while there were lots of groups in London, most met in pubs at night and crossing London late at night on my own is not something I want to do. Also finding the right group can be hit and miss. For me I think I've been lucky this time. I have found a group that meets in Hammersmith on a Saturday afternoon in a cafe. It's a bit of a trek but doable. So two weeks ago I went along. It was the right choice. We did two hours of free writing with timed sessions and random word exercises. We were encouraged to feedback our work, but it's not obligatory. I came away inspired and with ideas I was able to turn into poems. I went again yesterday afternoon, when the theme was decay. We were a larger group, all new people to me, and again I came away with a poem and the first few lines of a potential story. We laughed a lot and we wrote a lot. While we haven't done feedback on work we do outside of meetings, this is great for generating new ideas. This felt like a shot in the arm. A good one! It's always interesting to see how each of us in the group interprets the random words in a piece of writing. I love random words!

This morning I sat down to develop the potential short story. It's my first love story set in the dark ages! It's also the first new story I've written in some time.

Meanwhile the rejections keep coming and more and more I'm beginning to think that I might just go it alone and self-publish my work. Still, that's for the future, and certainly not this year.  For now I just want to enjoy my writing and try new things.