A Small But Important Step.

 

I’ve been writing quietly for a long time.

Mostly for myself. Sometimes for friends. Often without any real sense of where the work might end up, beyond the satisfaction of finishing it and moving on to the next thing.

This week, I did something different.

I submitted a short story to a literary magazine for the first time.

That might not sound like much, but it felt like an important step. Not because of the outcome — which is entirely out of my hands — but because of the process. I finished the story properly. I resisted the urge to keep tinkering. I read the submission guidelines carefully. I sent it off, and then I closed the file.

There’s something quietly liberating about that.

For years, I think I treated writing as something provisional — something I was always “working towards”. Submitting a piece forces you to accept that a story can be finished, even if it isn’t perfect. It asks you to trust the work enough to let it go.

Whatever comes back — yes, no, or nothing at all — the real value is in having taken the step. It’s a shift from thinking about writing seriously to actually doing it seriously.

Now it’s time to move on to the next piece and let this one sit where it belongs.

That feels like progress.

David