Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette

Some Of My Old Amateur Photography

The advice to “just keep writing and good things will happen” can be difficult advice for a young writer to accept.  I was a young writer once and like many young writers I wanted things to happen fast.  I wanted fame.  I wanted big money.

Well, things did not happen fast.  I was never famous and I did not make any big money.

But good things did happen to me because I was a writer who kept writing.

I got a Liberal Arts Associates degree around 1973.  I was accepted to the University of Pittsburgh as a sophomore writing major around 1999.  I graduated with a BA in 2003.  I was accepted to the graduate writing program that same year.  And in that same year I was awarded a fellowship that not only paid for my graduate studies but also gave me a generous stipend to live on for three years.

After I graduated with an MFA, a local newsweekly started publishing my flash fiction stories and articles and paid me for them.  I published over fifty pieces in a two-year period and was offered the paid position of fiction editor.  Unfortunately, the weekly folded before I could take up my position.

So I took early retirement to become a full-time blogger.  Money is tight, but after three years I can say that I am the editor, publisher of what may be the most dynamic flash fiction magazine in the world.

Just keep writing and good things will happen to you.

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Filed under: Commentaries Tagged: | advice, famous, flash fiction magazine, full-time blogger, graduate studies, MFA, stipend, University of Pittsburgh, writer, writing