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Showing posts from October, 2012

Thick Writerly Skin

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You know your panel is awesome is Jan Seale attends. Thanks, Octavio Quintanilla, for the photo! Remember? My 2012 goal was to amass 100 rejection letters? Well, I'm not there yet. But! There is SOME good coming out of my rejection mission. This past Saturday, the Texas Association of Creative Writing Teachers held their annual conference at UTPA. I was invited to talk on a panel and share how I survived and thrived in an MFA program. I gave tips on how to grow that thick writerly skin -- you know, that thin layer of awesomeness that comes between me and chronic depression? Yep. That nifty stuff X-D Anyway -- I thought up four tips: 1.        Understand that all writers get rejections, whether they talk about them or not. Why is there such a stigma behind talking about your rejection letters? As writers, we all get them. It’s like farting. We all do it. We just don’t talk about it. But rejection is a healthy and natural part of our lives as writers. I’m tryin