Goober Writers Anonymous--Melissa Gill

Goober Writers Anonymous is a group for writers to vent about past or present writerly mistakes for therapeutic reasons, to educate others, or just for a laugh.  If you would like to join the group and sign up to submit a guest post, please leave me your email address in the comments below.

Perks of joining:  You get to put the nifty little badge on your blog (yes, this does indeed make you cool), sharing with others and being a part of a group is always fun, and I will put a link to your blog on my blog below under Members of GWA.

Today's guest blogger is Melissa Gill!  Please take a moment to visit her blog and become a follower!  It's completely worth it, trust me.  

Back yet?  Excellent!

Enjoy!

Melissa Is A Goober:

Oh the number of goober mistakes I’ve made on my journey to becoming a writer is long and high-larious.

Like the time I went to my first creative writing critique at my local Jr. College. The teacher said to write a short story of 10 pages or less. I raced right home and poured my soul into a beautiful little story called “Zuri of the Savannah.” I was so excited I couldn’t wait to read it. Problem was, I had no idea that you should double space your manuscripts. I came from a business background and everything was single spaced. Luckily there were only a couple of other participants, but I about died of embarrassment.

Around that time I was working on my first Manuscript. I finally got to The End and ran it through spell check. Then for good measure I printed it out and gave it a once over looking for missing commas, or words that spell check didn’t pick up. That was what I called revision at the time. I printed it again, put it in a big white envelope, and mailed it off to the publisher I thought would be best. About four weeks later, the big honking thing was back in my mailbox with a polite rejection letter, and not a mark on it.

I continue to make mistakes, but I’ve learned a lot by getting engaged with the writing community through blogs, critique group, SCBWI. One thing that is and always will be hard for me, is simple attention to detail. I am not a detail oriented person. I’ve had several situations where I’ve sent out queries and forgotten to put “query” in the subject line. Last week, I forgot to attach my pages. Stupid goobery stuff like that. But sorry, that’s just the kind of person I am.

I am extremely cautious. I never just jump into the pool, I put in a toe first. That’s probably prevented me from making a million goobery mistakes. But there’s a lot to be said for being a risk taker too, sometimes I wish I were more daring. 

Thanks, Melissa!  Oh boy does this sound like me!  I can't even tell you guys how many mistakes I still make when sending out queries.  And, of course, I think most of us went through the early stages of writing thinking editing consisted of dotting our "i"s and crossing our "t"s, and nothing more.

Discussion:  How about you, dear readers?  Does this tale sound familiar to something you experienced, or are still experiencing?  Tell us about it!  We promise not to laugh.  :P

~Emily White