Courage

October

/ Damean Mathews, Author / Leave a comment

This month is one of the best of the year. Let me come right out of the gate saying that. There’s Halloween, Fall colors, cooling weather and most importantly; my anniversary. That is incredibly exciting to me.

I love Fall, I love Halloween, and I love the cooler weather.

And going into Fall always represents the beginning of a renewal, for me. The heat of summer fades into the cool silence of winter and October is that peaceful sweet spot between the two. I can’t count the time I’ve gone outside from night to night to find each one just a little cooler and just a little quieter than the last. It’s honestly no wonder people find the month a little spooky. The leaves rattling on the trees as the evening breeze flows through the purple tinted mountains is enough to make anyone’s heart skip a beat. It’s amazing.

But that’s not to say the month is entirely without its sadness. As much happiness as the month brings, it also has a sad day as well. Today, October 3rd, was my grandfather’s birthday. Were he alive he would have turned 75 today. I lost him twelve years ago, but it still feels like yesterday that I would go fishing with him and help him in his garden, learning more from him than I even realized. I always try to take a moment on this day to think of him and what he would think of my life and the man I have become. I like to think that he would be proud of my accomplishments. As a man who loved his family and life in general and enjoyed reading the paper each morning, I think he would be proud to see my job as a reporter. Of course, I like to think he would also be very happy to see the way I approach life and the fact that I strive to be a better man with each passing day.

I look back on my memories of him and the portion of his life I got to experience and I wonder what I can do to honor him more, what I can do to make sure people see him in me with each passing day. That’s important to me. Legacy and family lines are something I definitely don’t want to lose. I look forward to the day that I can have a nice full garden to tend to in the summer and children to pass my values to. One thing that I can certainly say I got from him is a work ethic that I couldn’t shake if I tried. Doing something – being something – is one of the best things a man can do, in my opinion.

So as I go into the month with full force I will go into it wanting to be more like one of the best men I knew. I will look at everything and find a way to be a better, stronger man. I will find a way to be a better human and a better writer. I challenge each of you to do the same. It’s easy to slip into the routine of everyday life and not think about what we can alter to help us do and be better, but I challenge you to do just that. Look at every aspect of your life one at a time and find something you can do better. One thing that I am determined to do by the end of the week is try to find at least one publisher/agent to send one of my novels to. It’s something I have put off for far too long, and I think it’s high time I make the effort to make it happen. If anyone has any tips on this process, feel free to pass them along to me and to the other readers! If there’s something you feel like discussing, the comments section is always open and my inbox is always ready for conversation as well.

Enjoy the month, and remember to always be on the lookout for ways to improve and for ways to leave your legacy for those you may not even realize are watching. Happy October, everyone.

Light up the Darkness

/ Damean Mathews, Author / 10 Comments

A lot of things have happened in the world in the last week, and most of it hasn’t been very good. The hate and intolerance that holds us back as a species is still running rampant in our society, and it is something I don’t often address. I try to stay out of public affairs and generally avoid discussing things of this nature because I have a very strong opinion on the matter. I believe in love and peace. I believe in loving what we love and not having to hide who we are, no matter who we are around. Despite my sometimes near crippling social anxiety when it comes to being in a crowd, I still love making sure I have the opportunity to share my opinions – something which many people, even in the 21st century, are still persecuted for.

The world reacted roughly when acts of terrorism were announced in the last month; bombings, looting, a night club shooting that left 50 people dead just because someone didn’t agree with whom they loved. And the past week has been similar. In case you haven’t caught the news in your part of the world, a young black man was killed earlier this week in the U.S. by police officers in what can be considered nothing short of police brutality. Many people reacted harshly, calling all cops corrupt and racist, allowing the hate that has kept us back for so long continue to rule their lives. That hate led to a sniper opening fire on police in Texas and taking the lives of five officers who put their lives on the line to keep others safe.

While those matters are terrible, something that hasn’t gotten a lot of mass media attention is the fact that there were also two shootings in my part of the country within 24 hours of one another. The first, taking place early Thursday morning, claimed the life of an innocent woman who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That woman worked for the same newspaper that I work for. She was killed in cold blood while on the way to work, while four others were injured by the same shooter. The next day someone reported being shot by an unknown assailant for an unknown reason. Why? Why have we allowed ourselves to be bogged down by the senseless hate and racism and every other pointless thing that does nothing but cause pain?

I’ve been thinking on this for a bit and I think that one of the biggest problems is that we don’t address it unless we have to. In everyday life, when there hasn’t been an assault, a shooting or an act of terrorism, how often does racism and hate come across your mind? Even if you have a prejudice against someone, be it over race or not, how often do you look at yourself and say “wow, that’s racist/prejudiced?” Not at all. Because unless someone has performed an act that complies with the extreme ideas of racism and hate, we sweep it under the rug. Humans don’t want to live in misery and fear. We want to enjoy life and act as if there is absolutely nothing wrong with the way we live, even if deep within us boils a cauldron of hatred.

Realizing this got me thinking a lot about light and darkness. A bit cliché, but it makes a lot of sense to me. I thought about the difference between happiness, which is light and hatred, which is obviously dark. We look at the world with blinders on more often than not because it is easier to believe everyone is happy and there are no problems with anything than it is to look at the problems and try to find a solution. This leads to things like hate and racism being stored away to be ignored until we are forced, by some tragedy, to address them again. This lead me to thinking of the things that grow in light vs. things that grow in darkness. The concept might sound overly simple when saying it like that, but it does make sense.

If you put a plant in total darkness, does it flourish? No. It might struggle on feebly for some time, but it can’t be healthy because overall, most plants need sun to live. The same goes with love. You can’t shut it away and never use it. It won’t last. It needs exposure, it needs fresh air, it needs to be EXPRESSED.  But hate… you put hate in a dark corner of your soul and pretend it doesn’t exist and it will thrive. It will grow and grow and consume everything until you are full of the hatred that leads to innocent people being gunned down in the street.

So often we want to look at ourselves and say that nothing is wrong with the way we think or feel, that we are fully happy and fully right in our way of life. But do you avoid certain people because of what they look like or what they believe? Racism and prejudice aren’t just about killing someone who is different than you. It often starts just by thinking “that’s different. I don’t care for that.” But that can’t be the case, can it? Just because you instinctively cross the street if you see a black man walking towards you, or you wait for the next elevator because the woman who just got on this one is wearing a hijab, that isn’t racism, is it? Yes. And it’s the denial of that fact that leads to the problems in this world.

We can’t go on acting like it’s OK to bash someone because of how they live. That is not human, guys. You can’t wake up one morning and give change to a homeless man and then go home and talk about how dumb your neighbor is because he buys a new car every year. That’s hate. You can’t say that the person who hung a black man 70 years ago was racist and then call a black man you see on the street a thug because he dresses differently than you. That’s not how life should work. We can not keep acting like being different is wrong. You are not going to find a single person on the face of this planet who likes everything you do in the same way that you do. That would make us all robots.

We have the free will to make out own choices for a reason. God put us all here on this rock and said “Love thy neighbor”. Are you loving your neighbor when you walk down the road and badmouth someone for having darker skin than you? No. Are you loving your neighbor when you drive by a mosque and think about how ridiculous the people inside look as they pray facing Mecca? Absolutely not. It is one thing to recognize that someone is different, but it is another thing entirely to feel they are inferior because of it.

This is an issue, people. It is not something that we need to continue letting go un-discussed. Racism will not go away until we stop hiding it. We are all on this planet together and it is meant for us all to live in peace. We can’t do that if we keep pretending we don’t have a problem. People are going to keep dying if we can’t learn to accept that everyone is different. That’s all it takes. We need to look at the world and say “there are over 7 billion of us here, and not one of us is completely alike. And that is perfectly fine.” Until we learn to do that, innocent lives will continue to be lost and pain will continue to be felt. I will leave you with a quote from one of the best human rights advocates I’ve ever studied; Robert Nesta “Bob” Marley.

“Light up the Darkness.”

That is what we have to do. We have to look at the world and look at ourselves and stop hiding what issues exist. If we have a problem with someone due to race, religion or anything else we have to stop acting as if that is normal and OK. Because it is not. We have to shine a light on those bits of darkness and accept that we have an issue with something. And then we need to find a way to deal with it that does not involve violence. Taking the life of someone we don’t agree with is not a solution. We have to find a way to live together in peace. As much as I hate to say it, in times like these I see a group of leaders like those in “The Giver”, and I think they may have had some good points. They did away with religion and race and even the ability to see color – because mankind couldn’t handle it. Unfortunately with that went the chance for individuality, opinion and emotion. Is that what we want, people? An existence that is literally just that? This world, this life, is precious. For everyone. Not just the people you agree with. We have to learn that before it is too late.

Light up the darkness.

Trying Harder

/ Damean Mathews, Author / 1 Comment

Hey there friends and fans!! I hope life has treated each and every one of you absolutely wonderfully of late.  Personally my adjustment to a new city, new job and new home has finally lead to a fairly adjusted schedule, at least for now. Hopefully things will continue to work out well.

As many of you may remember from earlier in the year, last weekend was the Appalachian Heritage Writers Symposium.  It was an amazing experience,  as always, and it inspired me even more to make a dedicated effort to my writing. With any luck this will work out well, since it seems that life may be calming down a bit and I will hopefully be able to set a schedule that will allow me to dedicate time each day, or at least each week,  to attempting to get something out there!

In addition to this general hope, I have decided that I am going to try a few new ways of advertising my work to anyone who may be interested, one if which I am hoping you’ll all participate in. I am starting a newsletter! I’ll be setting it up this week, and hopefully have the first one out by the weekend. I plan to make a post on here and on my Facebook author page giving the details on how to sign up for it. I plan to use it to give people an idea of what I am working on, where my works in progress are in the development and editing process and will even be giving some exclusive excerpts to those who subscribe!

My goal, in case I haven’t run it into the ground yet, is to have something in the process of publication by the end of this year. With the help of my friends and fans, as well as dedication and effort on my part, I know I can make that happen.  So I thank you all for your support and well wishes. You have no idea how much it means to me. I sincerely hope to have some new work to share with you all very soon!! Feel free to contact me and leave any and all comments you wish! I’m glad to be back!

Cutting the Red Tape

/ Damean Mathews, Author / 3 Comments

As you all know last week I made a post announcing my new job opportunity. I have received immense support and congratulations from you all and I couldn’t be more appreciative. One thing that is always a part of taking a step to better yourself and your family is the red tape associated with changing locations and jobs. I currently live around 45 minutes or an hour away from the office I’ll be working from, so I’m looking to relocate to make my commute a little shorter and I am definitely seeing the red tape show up with that process. Between trying to get our student loans on a solid repayment plan to getting pre-approved for a mortage, the obstacles are everywhere. When discussing what to blog about today, I decided to discuss a bit about that red tape in a way that is relevant to all of you as well (since it’s pretty much all we can focus on this week due to the mind-numbing stress of it all).

Red tape can come in many forms for an artist, and can be as simple as checking the format on a submission, or it can be as hard as nailing down the best time and place to have a meeting with someone interested in your work. Sometimes the red tape can be easily avoided, and other times it will wrap you up until you’re almost certain you’ll never get free of it. One such instance of this comes in the form of getting your piece ready for a certain venue. For instance, you may have a piece that you have written entirely in Arial Bold, your favorite font, only to find out that the publisher you are looking into will only accept pieces submitted in Times New Roman. This isn’t that big of a deal and is really a simple fix (control + A and change the font, for those of us who don’t do computers). In this case you’ve gotten through the red tape quite simply.

Other cases may find you scrambling a bit to get your work ready. The submission process can be one of these things. Less than a decade ago most journals and publications still worked in hard copy submissions, email submissions unheard of for some of them. Unfortunately  that is no longer the case. Most large publications now only accept online submissions either via email, through Submittable or some other platform. This in itself may not be all that difficult since most of us, even if we don’t write our pieces completely on the computer, will still have a back-up electronic copy ready to go whenever it may be needed. But what can be a problem is when the journal doesn’t specify how best to submit. Most do, granted, but there are those that don’t, and this can be a big issue. If we submit via email they may not get it, or may trash it as many journals who use other platforms tell you they will do with email submissions, or they may just not get it.

One of the worst cases of pre-publishing red tape that I’ve come across recently comes into play when you are using the tactic of simultaneous submissions, which can be both helpful and maddening at the same time. Simultaneous submissions means that you send the same piece with its respective cover letter to multiple venues in order to broaden your possibilities for publication. This isn’t a secret, of course, as most journals will flat out tell you that they accept simultaneous submissions as long as you tell them if the piece has been accepted elsewhere before they get to it. Of course, there are those who say that they don’t accept them, but honestly I don’t think that is going to really stop many of us in the long run, if you’re determined to get the work out there. The complication comes in when you look at the submission guidelines for the venues in question. I occasionally go on submitting sprees where I will look at a dozen or so venues and get pieces ready to send in, and sometimes that process can take hours, even if your work fits the basics of their specifications.

What I mean in this instance is the way you have to submit. The minor, but potentially devastating red tape. In my experience, most journals have their own way they prefer to get submissions. Most of the time this, in some way or another, involves having your piece attached to an email, often with no name or labels other than the title in the piece itself in order to maintain anonymity until chosen, while the body of your email gives you a chance to tell them your name and perhaps give a summary of the piece and why you think it fits, and a small bio. But there are the exceptions. I’ve come across editors who tell those interested in submitting to put their name and submission title in the subject of the email and copy and paste their piece in the body of the email, saying any messages received with attachments will be discarded without being viewed. Now, in the era of the ever hungry computer virus, I can understand that to a point, but when preparing multiple submissions, one little slip-up can result in a rejection or even having your submission overlooked by default.

The same goes with the red tape in life. If we forget to dot an ‘i’ or cross a ‘t’ our whole process could come crashing back down just for us to have to start all over again. Granted, the margin of error in things like a mortage application varies quite a bit than, say, a short story submission to The New Yorker, it’s all relative in its own way. In this day and age we definitely have to make absolutely certain that we have an eye for detail, because the red tape can sometimes be a bit confusing, but with the proper determination and the right amount of preparation you’ll be through it before you know it, sitting in a new house or opening your sample copy of the journal with your story as the center piece. Obviously I haven’t covered all of the possibilities here, so what other forms of red tape have you all encountered in your journeys, and how did you cut through it to make it where you are now?

In the meantime, if any of you have a topic suggestion, I ask that you definitely get it to me. Leave your comments below and happy writing!

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The Road to Greatness

/ Damean Mathews, Author / 4 Comments

Last week I made a post talking about what I would like to be remembered for. I asked for feedback from my readers and got some great responses as well, and it made me think about something that I’ve often had on my mind in regards to writing and the future. The simplest way to say it is this; I want to be great. Not just at writing, mind you, but that is the task at hand here. I want to be great, I want to wow people, and I want to create something that is not just going to be remembered, but something that is worthy of remembering.

One of my favorite movies (developed from an amazing book that I am just now getting my hands on) that addresses this best is Eddie and The Cruisers. Eddie Wilson was a man with a passion that few people could understand. It burned inside of him so hot and so strong that he literally couldn’t be happy unless he was letting it out in his music. He struck it big with an album and his band toured the East Coast for a while before things got a little hairy. The movie, obviously straying a bit, portrayed this by having The Cruisers cut an album with a different style of music than most people were used to in the 50’s, which the execs of their label flat out condemned. Eddie, driven mad by rage, left the studio and wasn’t seen again (spoiler alert), at least not until the second movie. Eddie left in a rage because his passion, the thing that he felt he was created to do, was being stomped on, his ideas being viewed as poor quality. Eddie felt immensely betrayed at being told his ideas weren’t good enough and he uttered a statement which always sends chills through me.

“If I can’t be great then there’s no sense in ever playing music again.”

Since I first put pen to paper I have felt this way about my writing. But during that time; during the writing, the stress, the feeling that I’ll never make it to the top of anyone’s slush pile long enough for my work to be considered, I’ve never taken the time to define exactly what ‘great’ is. To Eddie Wilson it was creating a sound unlike anyone has ever heard before. But what is it to me? After some deliberating and thinking, I think I have one potential tentative definition to strive for.

To me great is; having someone read my work and be inspired or moved by it. Having someone read one of my books and rethink what they thought they knew of the topic before finding my work. Having someone who considers one of my book to be one of their favorites. Maybe even someone who can’t stop thinking about words that I wrote, something that I created. To me that’s great. Of course a million dollar book deal, book signings in at least 5 major U.S. cities and a book tour where I get to read from and discuss my work after riding the top of the best seller list would also be great, I think the others hold a similar impact. At least for the person affected by the work.

That leads me to another instance of asking for all of you to tell me your own opinions on the matter. We all want to be great at our respective crafts, to have the satisfaction of knowing that we did our best and that our best is pretty darn good, but what exactly puts us over that line? So tell me, when you all think about what constitutes greatness in regards to your work, what exactly do you see? Are you presenting your art work to a group of a few dozen at a private show, playing music for a state leader, or are you sitting around the campfire telling scary stories to your children and knowing that the story will then be passed down to your grandchildren because the words were so powerful they stuck and became a solid foundation in your child’s memory? Leave a comment or, if that’s too open, send me a message and tell me what you think of when you think of greatness. What level do you think your work must reach before you will finally consider yourself having achieved greatness? And, furthermore, why?

As always, I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and I welcome all comments and questions. If any of you have a topic suggestion, I ask that you definitely get it to me. I would love to know that I’m talking about the things that you all want to hear more about. Leave your comments below and happy writing!

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How Will I Be Remembered?

/ Damean Mathews, Author / 15 Comments

That is a question I’m sure a lot of us have asked ourselves at least once. When you are an artist of any sort your biggest goal is to be remembered for the works you produce, the pieces you have given to the world through the haze of your own blood, sweat and tears. For others it may be a simpler answer. Maybe you want to be remembered for standing up for the rights of someone who couldn’t stand up for themselves, or for building the congregation to the most successful church in the state, or even something as simple as having the best peach cobbler this side of the Mississippi. Whatever your goal, it is yours. It is important to you. And that makes it important. That means you will usually do whatever it takes to make it happen, right? Of course. So my question for all of you is this; what do you want to be remembered for? When someone, be it family and friends or a complete stranger, thinks of you what do you want them to envision? I implore you to seek out that answer, make sure you understand it yourself and decide what the best way to make it happen is and post it below. I’m not asking for a play-by-play of the next twenty years of your life, but a standard goal and a brief method of ensuring you see success in that endeavor, if for no other reason than because writing it down will give it substance. It will make it seem much more real than just letting it float around in your head – and it may even give you motivation to take the first step, which is always the hardest, and make an effort to bring your future into the present. Who knows, you may even meet someone in the comments who can be of great help to you in the process. So sit back and think for a few moments on what you would like to be remembered for, post it in the comments and then, of course, go make it happen!

That being said, personally something I would generally like to be remembered for is my writing. If that is too vague, one thing I specifically would like to be remembered for is my version of the vampire legend. I want people to think of me and put me in the same rank as Bram Stoker and Anne Rice, among others. I want to know that my ideas didn’t fall dead, and that they are actually being embraced by those who read them. I feel like if at least one person can look at my work in this light then I have succeeded. That’s me, guys. Now let’s hear about all of you!

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Exciting Announcement

/ Damean Mathews, Author / 11 Comments

I do apologize, friends and fans, for my absence so far this week, but I have been preparing to make a very exciting announcement. As many of you know I have been working as a library specialist for the last seven or eight months and I absolutely love it, although it doesn’t give me much of an opportunity to exercise and better develop my journalism skills.

I have always been fascinated by journalism, but had no opportunity to actually put my interest to the test until my final year of college, during which time I was made Head News Writer of my college newspaper. This job made me realize just how much I loved being a news writer/reporter and it allowed me to truly branch out and hone my skills as a writer. Upon graduation, I continued to blog and to write, but didn’t have many opportunities for practicing formal journalism – until now.

I am ecstatic to announce that I have been offered a reporter position with the Bristol Herald Courier, one of the most renowned papers in my region and I have graciously accepted. I will tentatively be starting my new job in the next two and half weeks or so and I couldn’t be more excited. I hope all of you will be able to check out my work with this paper. I plan to continue blogging at least once a week (but hopefully twice) while doing this job, but during my training and getting used to the flow of that job, things may get a bit jumpy. I am very excited about the changes coming in the near future and I can’t wait to be able to write stories and share the news of the region with all of the readers of this awesome production! Thank you all for your patience while I adjust to this much anticipated change of pace!

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Unicorns are Real

/ Damean Mathews, Author / 2 Comments

Yes, I know this statement brings a number of things to mind, and it may be one that some of you are already familiar with, but I wanted to make this title and write  few words on this seemingly silly topic because the message many of will get can be applied to a number of things, including potential success in virtually anything we really set our minds to.

Of course, I could turn this into a rant about how a great many creatures thought to be mythological have since been proven real and use that as an argument for the possibility of the existence of most other cryptids out there, but that’s another topic entirely.

My point for today is this; so many people throughout history have used the legend and the image of the unicorn to be silly and stand for something that is impossible, but the truth of the matter is that nothing is impossible. Granted, the creature being referred to as a unicorn by science was much more akin to a cross between a rhino and a woolly mammoth, as it stood around 6 feet tall and weighed in at approximately 8, 000 pounds. Personally I don’t think that guy is going to be flying through any clouds or running across any rainbows.

But I digress. The reason this information is important is simple; anything is possible. I usually try to coach you guys through a specific issue that can have a crippling effect on some artists, but today I’m just addressing the real basics. You need to have faith. There are so many people who have risen through the adversity that met them to be some of the most treasured and celebrated authors in history. Critics and agents alike have torn some of our favorite authors apart countless times, and they still get right back up and keep putting pen to paper because that’s just what you do. I’ll keep this short and sweet today, guys and just leave you with a simple reminder that I think we could all use sometimes.

Your ideas came to you, so no matter what anybody says you owe it to yourself and to the world to keep at it. People who never thought they would see success are changing the world every day. Keep writing that book and don’t ever give up on your self. Remember, unicorns are real and anything is possible

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Is It Still Mine?

/ Damean Mathews, Author / 2 Comments

Sometimes as artists we have a piece that resonates with us so deeply and becomes so precious to us that it takes a very long time to go from start to finish. Now, that’s not to say that this particular piece is going to be any better or worse than any other thing that we produce, but it is just more uniquely “us”, I think. One such instance of this comes from (of course) Stephen King and his work on the Dark Tower series. King got this idea decades ago and just recently published the final piece (at least for now) of the Dark Tower puzzle. The books, a series of 7 with a stand alone follow-up, tell the tale of Roland Deschain and his urgent attempt to right what is wrong with the world by find and fixing the Dark Tower. Each book is deeper and more dense than the last and, with the exception of the stand alone (which I own but haven’t yet read), each one is larger than the last. King has called this series his magnum opus and has actually found a way to weave most of his other pieces into the world of Roland and his Ka-Tet. At the beginning of each book there is a foreword, at the end an afterword, and in almost each one King explains that the world of Roland grows a little more every time he attempts to visit it, the story becoming more complex every time he begins to work on it.

This is what I’m talking about. Speaking from experience, my own magnum opus (Maverip and its prequel/sequels) have gone through more phases than I ever imagined when the idea hit me some 9 years ago. That’s almost a decade of work. Each novel has taken me more or less three years to complete so far (yes, that means I only have two of them fully ready for beta readers), and the ideas keep coming. I can look at the notes I made when the idea first hit me, can actually still remember the experience of the idea flowing through my brain while listening to music in the car riding through the mountains on a warm summer night, and I can see how much the piece has grown and changed without effort.

But what does that mean? Has my idea gone from one thing to another? Have I butchered my own work by adding to it and allowing it to change? As an author, when that big piece comes to you and rides the years in your brain, letting every single day of your life affect the outcome and progression, I can promise you that you will end up asking that question at least once. I have asked it of myself and my work more times than I care to admit. But it’s nonsense. As I’ve talked about countless times before, when a piece that is really alive comes to you, begging to be written, it will often times end up writing itself and using you as a tool. Your ideas will put themselves on paper with little or no effort from you, with the exception of punching the keys or holding the pen and flipping the page. This is when you know that you are meant for the work and that the work is meant for you.

So why should it scare us when the work guides itself in a different direction than we originally saw? The answers may differ from person to person, but in my experience they often come back to one simple and brutal concept; Failure. We are afraid that if we can’t guide the work along exactly as we thought when we first humored the idea then we will never be able to convince someone else to read it. This is crazy. Why should we be afraid of our own abilities? The ideas that come to us in such depth that they allow us to build an entirely new world based on our own concepts are not ones that will fail us. We need to have faith in ourselves, our talents, our abilities and our ideas. Basically, we have to give ourselves artistic freedom if we ever hope to have real and true success in whatever craft we have chosen. Personally I would love to discuss this more in depth with anyone who is willing, so I would like for anyone who has felt this fear or questioned their work in this way to leave a comment or send me an email regarding what inspired the feeling and how you handled it. I hope you’ve all found this useful!

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Preparing for Advancement

/ Damean Mathews, Author / 3 Comments

In addition to trying to always write helpful and inspiring blog posts for all of the budding artists out there, I occasionally like to let those of you who are fans of my work know a little about what’s going on in that part of my life. 2016 has treated me fairly well so far, allowing me to submit pieces to a number of different venues, some of which I am still eagerly waiting to hear back from. In addition to this, I have begun taking the first steps in preparing Moonlight, my latest novel, to send to an agent.

To be brutally honest that process somewhat terrifies me. In the past it has always made my heart stop when I sent works out, but this feels even more serious. Obviously it is, but I think many of you will know what I mean. I put blood, sweat and tears into this novel, and stayed up much later than I should for I don’t even know how many nights trying to write it, only to have to sort through the last few paragraphs in front of me the next morning to make sure I hadn’t jotted down some inexplicable jumble of nonsense. So far in this process I have been trying to work with beta readers, some of which have been much less helpful than I’d hoped, and have gone through three previous edits. I tell myself that I would love to have a few more opinions, but at the same time I wonder if that’s just me trying to put off the rest of the process.

Either way I really want to make an active attempt to get myself published and get my work out to a larger audience and use the gift that I feel God has given me. I have a feeling this process may be a long and arduous one, but I am more than ready to get it started. I have worked with small journals and publications for almost six years now, taking the route of self publishing when I felt the smaller venues weren’t getting me where I wanted to be. I think I chose this route, for one, out of curiosity, but also largely because there is a part of me that is terrified of allowing someone else the opportunity of breaking my work down and tearing it to shreds. But that’s the whole point isn’t it? Centuries later and we are still tearing Shakespeare apart and trying to find his meaning, his purpose, utilizing every tool we have to analyze his voice and his work.

Isn’t that what writing is all about; letting others read it? In addition to trying to get this novel figured out, I am still tweaking on my Maverip series and trying to make sure that it is getting completed and trying to make sure that I haven’t strayed away from my original plan and purpose for the works, which is something that I seriously worry about after having worked on the pieces for 9 years. Again, I know a lot of you will probably know what I mean when I say that. The longer you work on a piece, the longer it takes to get it finished, the more you will worry that the work has altered from what you originally intended and has instead become something very different. This isn’t always a bad thing, of course, but that is a topic for another time.

I will wrap this informative piece up by letting you all in on one of my more exciting accomplishments of recent weeks. I entered a writing competition around the end of December with high hopes. At the time of entry the reveal was set for January 16th. The 16th came, with a notification from the contest runners (the contest was Neoverse, for anyone interested) that the reveal was actually pushed back to February 29th due to the fact that they had actually received several thousand entries, a fact which blew me away. So i waited for another month, as patiently as I could, until February 29th came and went. I checked my email almost hourly that entire day, finally going to bed a little before midnight only to wake up the next morning with some exciting news. Out of several thousand entries the judges had narrowed their possibilities down to 5% of the entries- and I was on that list! I know that might not seem like a big deal to some, but it made my heart absolutely SOAR. So now I am waiting to see if my piece will be picked for a spot in the winner’s circle (which consists of 20 pieces) and will get published online and in print via Neoverse. I’m not sure when that particular announcement will be made, but rest assured, when I know so will all of you!

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