An Aspiring Writer's New Blog

I love to read.  To read anything.  General fiction, mysteries, poetry, short stories.  I love them all.  I have a burning desire to write.  That's why I named this blog An Aspiring Writer's Thoughts.  Hopefully, I will actually write instead of just writing about wanting to write.  I actually have written some poetry and some essays, although not published.  I really want to publish a few poems and or essays.  I hope in the near future to put up on this blog a list of publishers I would like to submit work to.  Hopefully, this will help you, too, if you start reading my blog and you also want to submit some work.  I found a writer's blog that had a list and I have not yet explored each of the links to the publishers, but I hope to do that very soon. 

One reason I have not submitted very much work is because most of the time there is a reading fee and not all publishers pay for work that is published.  But, that is really not an issue for me.  Yes, it would be nice to actually be paid for my work, but I think more than anything I would like to develop a list of a few publishers that have accepted my work.  At this point, I think I would be happy to just be published.

My purpose for starting this blog is to keep myself motivated to continue to write and submit work.  I will post about writing, but from time to time I may also write a little about my life and other things that are going on besides writing.  But, I will try to stick to the writing theme as much as I can.  Sometimes I just need someplace to go and write about how I feel about things. 

I will try and post links about interesting articles I find about authors, writers and writing.  There is one writer that I just learned about this week.  She lives in Bell Buckle, Tennessee and her name is Margaret Britton Vaughn.  I saw a post about her on one of my friend's blogs.  There is a book of poetry that she wrote titled The Light in the Kitchen Window.  I just ordered a copy of it this week.

 

I don't know much about her since I just learned about her, but she writes in a very simple, easy to understand way.  I really like that.  When I read poetry, I really want to be able to understand it.  I don't want to read it and then try to figure out what in the world the writer was talking about.  I listened to an interview with her the other day and when asked about her style of writing she said that she writes for everyday people and tries to write something they can relate to.  She said she doesn't write for academia and she doesn't write in that language.  I am very inspired by her and I would like to write poetry in the same way.  Very simple language that touches someone's heart. 

 

I also ordered Life's Down to Old Women's Shoes.

 

 

She was voted Poet Laureate of Tennessee in 1999.  The following link goes to her poem titled "Who We Are" that was chosen as the Tennessee Bicentennial Poem and tells a little more about her.

 

Who We Are

 

Here is a link to another blog Writing Without Paper.  This blogger has lots of information on Margaret Britton Vaughn, plus a couple of excerpts of poems from her books.  This will give you an idea of her style of writing.

 

I really want to learn more about Ms. Vaughn and I would love to read everything she has written.  I am really inspired by this writer and her simple way of writing.  I hope to somehow achieve the same style of writing.