Please Like Me & My Work - A Post For Insecure Writers Support Group For March 2017

Today I met with a potential client.The project sounded like something I'd love to do; something that is interesting and has a meaningful impact on society. I liked the people. The interview and writing test went well, I think, and now it's now up to the company to decide if I'm their writer of choice, but I'm very hopeful.

This job-hunting process should be familiar territory to me, but it left me emotionally spent. I think one of the major reasons for this is because I Iiked what I heard and saw too much and so, became too invested in landing the job. I think deep down the crazy part of me was mumbling, "please like me and my work." Very disconcerting for me, because usually I just present myself and my portfolio and let the chips fall where they may.

I was very surprised that an old feature article that I wrote years ago, on an industry I never revisited since then, became relevant for the job.  I loved that piece and was quite proud of how it came out, considering my inexperience and lack contacts to interview. I had to go out to find the sources, convince them to talk to me and read up on the subject matter so I could ask pertinent questions and not sound like an idiot.

Speaking of revisiting old stories,  the prompt for this month's series of Insecure Writer's Support Group posts is: "Have you ever pulled out a really old story and reworked it? Did it work out?

My response to that is, sure, I do that quite a lot as part of my writing process. I usually put away stories in my notebooks and computers for months and years on end, and then when I want to write something for publication, I look through my cache of stories, rewrite  and edit them and then submit them.

Most recently, I reworked a children's story that I wrote in early 2000s, that was later published by Macmillan India as part of their school programme. I reworked it and submitted it to Roundafire publishers and it's now due for publication through them.

When I reworked the story, I found it to be a bit weak. But then, I was still young and inexperienced when I wrote it and hope that I have improved since then. The story is also going to be heavily illustrated by Roundafire, so it's somewhat different from the original version, as the illustrations also tell the story, reducing the need for some of the descriptive narrative.

I'm always pleased with a reworked a story. I feel that the elapsed time gives me distance from the original text and the writing that I do in the meantime helps improve my craft, which in turn impacts on the final process.

Many thanks to Alex Cavanaugh, the founder of the Insecure Writers Support Group and his co-hosts for the March posting Tamara Narayan, Patsy Collins, M.J. Fifield, and Nicohle Christopherson!