Networking with New and Old Writers

10/10/2017

I am networking with new writers and some old friends that are writers. Not to join a writing group, though, I am living vicariously through my friends' writing communities. I can't add anymore to my plate. For me, right now, it's more important to show up every day and just write; the writing process is giving me a crazy amount of energy to move forward.

However, I am looking for someone with skills to edit my short story a $1 a page. I know that's a cheap wage, but that is more than I can afford for now.

This morning, I wrote more of Alan's Cuento section 8, which you can read in The Harvest tab. Yes, we are at over 170 pages! Woo hoo.

Also, I am resting with the advice my friend Marcy gave me and that is to be open to editing changes. I reread the short story, and frankly, only want to change the pacing of the last battle scene with Ana. I wonder if the main character is encountering enough obstacles and if the pacing of the action is too fast. Still, it's not as quick as Erick Allen Yankee's smut! LOL.

Here's to being open to editing changes. #Resist

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Dr. Jesú Estrada,
Chicago, IL

I grew up on the outskirts of Yuma, AZ, close to the Cocopah reservation. Because I was ever-bored, I became an avid reader of Spanish comic books and anything in English. Then I moved onto Steinbeck and Stephen King and now read international authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Atwood, and Marouf. I also read a lot of coming of age fiction.

I have been writing stories in both Spanish and English since I was six years old. My fiction and poetry focus on working class issues, primarily about laborers in the Southwest. I also write non-serious fiction, like zombie fiction (I was into it before it got popular with the Walking Dead series, which I love) and dabble in magical realism with a fusion of cuentos and folklore.

I have a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from Washington State University, a Masters Degree in English from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelors of Arts from Northern Arizona University. I have also taught creative writing, and will do so, spring 2017. Currently, I live in Chicago and teach full-time at Harold Washington College to an amazing student population.

More about me. I am happily married, been so for over eight years, and have a fabulous seven-year-old who makes my life phenomenal: He too is starting to write short stories. I recently had a second baby, Simona, which put a temporary set-back on the publication of my first book, but made my life infinitely more wonderful. My husband is also incredibly supportive, and I have enlisted him to market whatever I do that is worth marketing.

That damned itch just won't let me be, so I'm back to my original love of words.