Hello, Goodbye

 

Saturday12th was the Association of Christian Writers Autumn Gathering in Rugby, and my last day as ACW webmaster.  I started to write an account of my time on the ACW Committee, but the piece was becoming too long and, I reflected, our reminiscences are interesting only to ourselves. 

I joined the ACW Committee as Competitions Manager in 2015, when I was mentally and emotionally in a very bad place, although I didn’t realise at the time how low I was.  I had just retired from full-time teaching, from a job I started out loving and ending up hating.  My writing also was in the doldrums.  You ACW members embraced me with acceptance and support and gave me confidence and the kick-start I needed to get writing again.  In 2020, during the pandemic, when we were all wondering whether we'd live a normal life again, and speak to anyone except on Zoom, I was asked to take over as webmaster.   Dear Reader, this was the role I relished.

I’m sure I would have written my novel Wodka, Or Tea With Milk, because I did NanoWriMo in 2015, but, without ACW members’ support (not all from the Committee), would I have edited it… and edited it… and edited it again… and eventually submitted it to publishers?  It’s about being around writers and amongst writers, hearing about what other writers are doing, the pitfalls and also the little titbits of useful information which take you forward. 

Of course, an obscene number of publishers said no to my precious opus.  Why would they want a novel by an unknown author set during the Solidarnosc period in Poland?  (‘What on earth was Solidarnosc anyway?’ younger people ask.)  I was starting to think getting my book taken on was a lost cause and, worse, that those publishers were right and it was rubbish.  Without you lot, I don’t know that I could have continued submitting.  Someone suggested The Conrad Press, a hybrid publisher, and I let this thought germinate in my mind.  Another ACW member told me about Jill’s Book Café and her list of indie publishers.  The Conrad Press was on that list and… well, eventually, Conrad published Wodka, Or Tea With Milk.  I’m also on the way to having a short story anthology out there next summer, with a different publisher – more about that later.

Even more importantly, ACW has brought me closer to God.  Of course, I go to my own church, but it’s good to be around ACW people who talk more openly about Him.  (Did you pray for the Autumn Gathering at 12 noon on Thursday?)  I won't be leaving ACW, however.  I am now Short Story Advisor, on the Members’ Services page of the ACW website and, in the next edition, on the inside page of Christian Writer. So do send me your short stories.  I hope to be supportive to those who ask for critiques as others have been to me.

Meanwhile, there are still vacancies on the ACW Committee:  Administrator and Competitions Manager.  Why don’t you give it a go?  Yes, it will be time-consuming, but a nice sort of time-consuming, with friends, writing and worshipping together.  And great fun.

Rosemary Johnson has had short stories published in CafeLit, Friday Flash Fiction. Paragraph Planet, Scribble and in many other magazines and ezines, and she reviews books for Together magazine (which members receive with the ACW eNews).  She is the author of Wodka, or Tea with Milk, a novel set during the Solidarnosc period in Poland.   She loves to travel, to read and to knit, and she is now hoping to do more writing.