Everyone remembers those days gone by when we would go to school. The face of school changes but the process still remains the same.
Teachers teach, students try to learn and absorb. There is growth and expectations during that time and when we as students do well or show improvement, there is that sort of feeling of accomplishment when the teacher acknowledges our work.
We are taught as we enter adulthood that this feeling dissipates and is usually not expressed to us. We are told to push harder, harder, harder, work faster, faster, faster and in the world of retail marketing, it’s sell, sell, sell for your life depends on it and that is the only motivation you get.
Recently I have seen exceptions to this rule. A few weeks ago, I found out that our local library had a writer’s workshop that was being led by a published local author named J. D. Webb and the two of us have taken advantage of this free, ongoing workshop.
This past session, we had a total of six students in the room with our facilitator, Mr. Webb and we were tasked with reading some of our works. I had read my work to Mr. Webb in other sessions and so had my wife, but this time, there were more people in the room. I read the first chapter of a story I am working on, which in this case involves a man that is partnered with a seductive, female assassin.
Most of the people liked the work even though it was not a genre the would normally read. They were generally complimentary
When my wife read her work, which was an account of a older man taking care of his ailing wife, who is suffering from dementia, the reaction was quite different. At least two or three of them were close to tears after hearing it, mainly because they had also lost loved ones to dementia and they felt the heartbreak in their souls.
What I found remarkable about this was that after all of this was said, Mr. Webb looked my wife in the eye and gave her the best compliment I think you could get from a published author. “This is publishable”. he said. She had only read the first chapter and had barely started on the second. In addition, it was the first story she had written in a long time.
For myself, I have written over eighty short stories on ReedsyPrompts and at no point was I ever told that my work was publishable.
You might think that I would experience some form of jealousy or envy, but strangely enough, I don’t. Long have I prayed to God for her to finally find her wings and fly. If a publishable work is the
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