When I started to write A Manual for Myself, with all my wet feet it was meant to be just a journal of reflection. Soon afterwards, my feet dried and I began having fanciful notions of becoming a writer. I looked for opportunities - to publish, to win and to earn.
A link to a submission form, a number with a dollar symbol and on a lucky day, a treasure list of links. My browser became a tapestry of tabs. It was pandemonium and the chaos outlasted the pandemic. I realized that opportunities for us all as writers are fundamentally broken.
Will my essay be read by a surly editor?
Will she roll her eyes over my poems on Medium?
Do they write themselves and understand what it takes to write, with a day job to attend to at the same time?
Will they commission me if I write well?
Will it be worth anything, beyond the money?
What will it take to make writing opportunities human for all of us?
Well, I guess someone has to do it.
A Manual for Myself is a live reflection on writing opportunities that I research for myself, my friends and my daughter, for the time she will want to write more and not have to search around for where.
I am happy to share it with you. When you subscribe, you get —
I am doing the hard work here, so you don’t have to.
Writing opportunities curated with care, delivered directly to your inbox.
(I will send them as they happen on my computer, with a weekly thunderclap that will help you navigate through all of them once a week if you have missed them before.)Each opportunity with insight, information and advice from a fellow writer.
As I maintain these opportunities for myself (I use Obsidian), I do not forget about them. You get someone to keep track and update whenever something changes.
When you become a paying subscriber, you also support my work to make storybooks for children in adversity at wallobooks.org.
Write well today,
Sanjukt