Today, I had the pleasure to attend a meeting of Delta Kappa Gamma, which is a professional organization for women teachers. I was invited to be a featured author for their meeting. There were three local authors present. I have to say that I really enjoyed being there and getting the chance to share my writing experiences with the group. The organization's membership consists of both active and retired teachers from a 6 county area. There are about 25 active members.
We had a nice brunch and talked about what inspired our book topic, the first step in publishing our book, and finished with giving any advice to members of the group that may be interested in submitting work.
My first published credit was a personal experience piece in Relate Magazine about seat belt use. I was involved in a serious car accident when I was 18 and I wrote a piece to help educate teen girls the importance of seat belt use. After this round table discussion, I was approached by a member (an active teacher). She was very interested in my personal experience story and asked if I had ever considered talking to teens in schools about it. After we talked she asked if I cared if she spoke to her administration about having me come and speak to their students. How cool is that? We exchanged emails and phone numbers and will be in touch soon.
I've never done anything like that before but I know I could do it. I had often thought about doing something like that in order to help others to not make the same mistake as I did, by not wearing my seat belt. After thinking about this, I have decided to rewrite my personal experience article on seat belts/car accident and turn it into a brand new article. Then try to get it published in a different magazine.
If you ever get the chance to talk at an author event or a round table discussion I encourage you to do it. No matter how small the group is or no matter how many books your have had published or no matter how few. People are interested in your work and want to hear about how you achieved what you have. And it can open new doors.
~B