I had been writing for publication and teaching mom writers for years when I wrote Writer Mama. I always take the best of what I have learned from working with students and pour it into all my books.
January has been an amazing month for me in terms of personal satisfaction. I always push myself to innovate something new each year, even if it’s just adding one new class to my teaching repertoire. Several years ago, I launched my writing training groups for mom writers and they have been incredibly inspiring and rewarding. And then this month, I added my new 21-day monthly writing challenges to my schedule. We have almost completed round one and we are about to launch another round and a round two. So now I have writing training for moms and writing training for any kind of writer.
So here it is only February and I’ve already innovated not just one, but two new things in 2013. This feels really good and it’s part of a promise I made to myself to preserve my energy so that I could be more creative, healthy and personally satisfied in 2013.
But just because I am starting new things doesn’t mean I don’t value the things I’ve been doing for years. I have been teaching my mom writers class, Writing & Publishing The Short Stuff (Especially For Moms) for six years straight. That comes to 4-5 rounds of classes a year for the past six years or about 24+ classes of eager mom writers. That’s a lot of work I’ve invested—a lot of getting to know women writers through their writing and a lot of responding to questions and reviewing work.
Collectively we have created a staggering amount of published work. Today, many of my mom writer students go on to participate in the WPSS Dream Team, my mom writer training program, where they work even more closely with me, applying what they just learned in the class to real-life professional situations. A lot of learning takes place in my WPSS class for mom writers, but a lot more learning begins to take place when students start to apply what they have learned in a training program like Dream Teams. It’s always pretty awesome when you have the privilege of witnessing the successes of people you just taught.
I have been training mom writers in groups for years. Students apply what they learned in my class and achieve results consistent with their focused efforts and professional attitude.
I still enjoy working with mom writers just once in any of my classes, but what I’ve really come to value over the years are the writing students who work with me over time. Whether in continued classes or a back-and-forth between classes and training groups, it’s personally enriching, when you pour as much positive energy into your work as I do, to have people work hard and treat you respectfully, especially while you are constantly pushing and prodding them to be work harder and realize more of their potential.
Some days when I get some good news from a mom I’ve worked with, which is most days at this point, I burst into tears. It’s not because I am taking credit for their hard work; it’s because I am so proud of them and so proud myself. I could have quit teaching these classes at any time. But I didn’t, because teaching mom writers is important work. And training mom writers over time is hard work, but I love it. I’m so proud when they find the focus and determination to succeed in achieving a goal that is meaningful to them. And PS this means that they learn they can do set and achieve goals in any arena.
I also feel proud that I found the focus and determination to coach my students on a path that leads to daily opportunities for personal empowerment and self-expression. It has taken an enormous amount of work to develop and launch quality classes that effectively build professional skills in writers. I have been doing it formally and consistently since 2001, and I am so glad I’ve stuck with it, no matter what.
And maybe the best part of it all is that I can look out my office window, not the one next to my desk, but the one that connects me to the whole world, and I can see the results of my hard work paying off for my past students all over the Internet in published works, professional quality websites, book deals, self-published e-books, happy editors, and eager readers. That’s when I know I have the best job. Because I don’t just throw information at people. I genuinely care about and monitor the results of my efforts and continually strive to improve.
I have also offered a writer mama scholarship for every WPSS class since January 2008. Caring about mom writers is my legacy and I’ve sustained it over many years. That’s not luck: that’s hours and days and months and years of consistent effort working with students. I’m proud of my work and I’m proud of my mom writer students. And I look forward to working with them for many years to come.
Thank you, ladies, for working with me, for trusting me, and for sharing your journeys with me. I appreciate how hard you work, what you are up against, and how bumpy career growth can often be. Clip by clip. Pitch by pitch. Book by book. We just stay the course. So look out world, because here we come!