Your Vocal Second Wind

I first joined Vocal after seeing an ad in Instagram for the $20,000 Little Black Book challenge. I have since written about fifteen stories on here but with every challenge lost I find myself throwing the world's biggest pity party. The tiniest violin would play and I would ask myself the same questions over and over: Am I not a good writer? Am I not reaching the right audience? What am I doing this for?

We all need to let ourselves vent and feel our sad feelings but we must not let them stop us from doing what we love which is to write.

So here are my top three ways for pushing past that mean little voice in all our heads and getting back to doing what we love: writing.

#1: Read other people's stories (and always leave a like!)

You can choose to be jealous or you can choose to use this resource we have all invested in. Everyone has such different writing styles on this website. They tell stories you will not hear about anywhere else. The challenges do push us as writers to try something new perhaps than what we are used to but looking into the many different categories has definitely inspired me to write again.

Even if a story is not your favorite what does it cost you to leave a like? That is like two cents for a person to build their savings on this website.

We are each other's biggest support system.

I have read some fascinating stories on here from ghost stories to little conspiracies about the world. I love to see everyone's writing styles develop and get ideas for what kind of content I would like to create.

#2 Join Facebook Vocal groups

Here are some links to a few of the Facebook Vocal groups I am a part of:

Vocal Media Creators

The Vocal Creators Lounge

The Vocal Creators Saloon

I usually only use Facebook to keep track of my cousin's lives but this is a way to get more likes and constructive insight into the stories you are sharing. So far, I have seen nothing but support from my fellow Vocal writers. It is nice to be a part of communities that are like-minded in wanting nothing more than to share their work. It beats trying to push a story on my own social media circles!

#3 Remember what you are doing this for

Of course, the money from challenges would be fantastic to have. It would be both validation and some income in a time of unemployment and uncertainty. I did not join this incredible website however because I thought I would become a professional paid writer from it.

My reasons for being here were simple: I wanted to build my writing portfolio and work on expanding my writing style.

I have joined other types of writing websites like Vocal but I have found that I am actually challenged here to write different kinds of pieces. I am a fiction writer and yet most of what I have written here have been reviews and personal pieces. I have only written two fiction pieces!

This is not the norm for me. I am grateful to Vocal and the Vocal community for giving me the chance to grow as a writer. I wrote my first two short stories of my life on here and will always be grateful to Vocal for helping me do that. These are all examples we can use in our writing portfolios when people ask us to read our writing work.

So lets put aside the tears, the pouting, and the self-doubt! Let's write.