In a speedy turn of events in one fall/winter season I have married, become pregnant, lost the baby, got to know an interesting Apache and now I am in the town I have been wishing/trying to return to since I left, eight years ago. My husband and I are settling in well… and I got bored… just for a moment. Being a writer I wrote and wrote some more. I think I wrote more for my second manuscript in two weeks than I did for the first in two months, plus I wrote a little for a third. I got a hold of a local writer’s group, talked to a local bookstore owner and walked… a lot… right… past… the local… newspaper…
Now, I have a writer friend back in Casper who spent time in Yellowstone, writing for a paper. I have taken classes and gone to conferences, all to help me with my chances of getting a bestseller out there. The suggestion of writing a column for the local newspaper has come up more than once. However, Hot Springs is a small town and their paper is even smaller. It only comes out once a week and there isn’t much room for a budding young author’s pipe dreams, but if I have learned one thing over the years it’s that the fastest road to failure is never trying. Well, I looked in the paper for guidelines, the website… nothing other than for Letters to the Editor. I didn’t want that, I wanted something big. So, I wrote something big. I figured it would be a little small for an article so I reduced it to about the size of a column then I took it in person to the receptionist to see if she had any writer’s guidelines. None, other than ones for Letters to the Editor, still she took the bait and the story.
Later on I got a call from a man from the paper. He said the story was a little long for a Letter to the Editor. (It was so hard to not say “DUH!” because it’s an opening to a column!) He said he liked it and wanted to publish it but didn’t want to reduce it any to put it in as a Letter to the Editor. (yay) So, I agreed to what he wanted and this is what he did. Thanks Guys!
