My Summer Project

Many of my classmates are currently searching for jobs, setting up vacations, and trying to figure out how they will stay busy this summer. Not me. I have worked every single summer (and winter, for that matter) since I was fourteen, and I have decided that I deserve a break.

I have always wanted to be a writer, and thanks to my fantastic school program, I feel that I am actually beginning to become one. But writing takes a great deal of time, effort, energy, and concentration that I was simply unable to supply this past year while completing school assignments and trying to hold onto my sanity. The summer is a perfect time to channel one’s inner creativity. Therefore, I have decided to take the summer off work and simply write.

An interesting idea, I know, and many people will probably criticize me for it throughout the summer. Others may assume this is just an elaborate scheme to be lazy for four months. But I assure the criticizers and the assumers that I will actually be doing something with my time. There is a huge literary world out there, and it’s full of magazines, newspapers and journals that want my stuff but just don’t know it yet. It takes a great deal of time to write a piece, edit it, and submit it for possible publication. It usually takes a year to get a rejection letter. So, by initiating the process and actually getting myself out there this summer, I’m proving to myself and everyone else that this is actually something I want to do. I might get rejected by every single publication, but the point of this project is simply to try. I don’t want to look back in thirty years and wonder “what if I had actually TRIED to be a writer that summer?”

I have also decided that my blog will be changing its name. The Daily Hope was great – don’t get me wrong – and we had amazing times together throughout the year. As I have been posting more frequently, however, something has occurred to me. My blog is literally a collection of different entries. I have main categories, including travel, Manitoba, and news, but I talk about so many different things every week. Therefore, the new name of my blog will be The Hope Files. Everything I write is organized on my laptop in a series of labelled, well-kept files, and I’ve realized that my blog follows the same concept. An interested reader can click on any category, and in essence they will be able to read anything in that “file.” Yup, pretty clever, and that just came to me now.

So, the most important step when deciding to undertake any particularly large venture is to create a well-organized plan. I’m not going to organize my time into months, but tasks...

- Submit The Unlikely Companion (short story) to a publication
- Re-work my Remembrance Day article into a story, and submit it to Legion magazine (hopefully in time for the Remembrance Day issue cut off)
- Contact, interview, and write about people involved in historical aspects of Manitoba
- Re-work my travel blog posts so they fit travel story criteria, and submit them to travel publications
- Re-work the poems and songs I wrote while in Europe, and see if I can create anything from them
- Research and start writing my Independent Professional Project for CreComm (I will include more information about that one later, but for now, all you need to know it that it’s a collection of stories about my great-aunt)
- Start writing the many stories that have been floating around in my head for YEARS, and try to publish as many as possible (I would list everything I plan to write about, but you’ll just have to stay tuned to find out!)

Now, just to dispel any worries that anyone STILL might have, I should also point out that I will be doing THINGS this summer. I am taking a class from May-July at school, and I will also be working for The Great Canadian Talk Show, a radio program on 92.9 Kick FM (which airs from 4 – 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday). There is the possibility of a part-time summer job, but that will only happen if I feel like I have way too much time on my hands. I am also going to Chicago on a school trip, and Jeff and I are hoping to go to New York City later this summer.

So there it is... I've laid it all out, and can’t take it back. I will spend my summer running around Winnipeg looking for inspiration, laptop in one hand and coffee cup in the other. It`s really anyone’s guess what will happen, but I would stay tuned if I were you. This is going to get interesting...