Jealous? Maybe. Inspired? Definitely!

I've only been blogging since the beginning of April, but I've wanted to start a blog long before that. One reason I didn't was because most of this year was spent studying for my preliminary exam, which is a research project and oral exam the Ph.D. students have to complete. The exam basically determines whether or not they'll be allowed to continue with the program and move on to writing their dissertations.

Another reason was because I was afraid that if my students read it and found something they didn't like, they'd report me to the universities where I teach. A select few feel free to criticize me on MyProfessorSucks.com (I only checked those rate your professor sites once years ago out of curiosity, and I found three bad reviews of me and two good ones. Since they wrote anonymously, I couldn't figure out who wrote the good reviews, but I recognized the negative critics.). But it's different if I were to do something like that because as the instructor, I'm supposed to be the "adult".

But what finally gave me the courage to start my own blog was because my friend maybeimamazed (aka Unprofessional Critic, aka Unpro) started a blog about pop culture last year, and had developed a following both on her blog and her Twitter page. Not only that, but she was taking several writing classes, completing novels and sending them out to agents, participating in writing groups, and writing for other websites. I have to admit, I was jealous that she had the courage to get her work out there and put so much effort into her writing.

But it's not like I was THAT jealous. I mean, it's not like I was the Jealous Friend in one of those TV movies, who appears to be nice and supportive of the TV heroine but is secretly plotting her demise and/or planning to usurp her identity. It's not like the ending of one of those movies, where I'd be waving around my manuscript while the heroine would be watching me in terror as I yelled, "The readers always liked YOU best!" Meanwhile, the Handsome Hero or the Concerned Friend would come rushing through the door at the last minute and knock me out cold, and then turn to embrace the heroine and carry her away, only to find that I'm not out cold after all; I'm getting back up to attack again, only to be knocked out cold for good the second time around.

But I was impressed, too. I have been writing stories since my third-grade teacher showed my class how, but I've mostly let my writing pile up in notebooks and only shared it with other people on a few rare occasions. I kept putting off sending my work out to short story contests and lit mags, because I told myself that my work wasn't good enough yet and that I wasn't ready yet. But seeing everything that Unpro accomplished with her writing made me want to start my own blog. And once I did, I got totally sucked into the blogosphere and all the fascinating blogs of other people sharing stories of their writing process. A lot of people were already sending out queries and had been published (like Talli Roland, whose book The Hating Game is coming out in 2011); it was interesting to read about what other people were going through and to read their encouragement of each other.

So now that I've read more and more of these blogs, especially the ones of you nice people following mine and leaving comments, it's inspired me to finally revise the stories I have stored away in my journals and computers. I printed out the guidelines for two short story contests and one online lit mag (they all have different deadlines) and taped them to the wall above my desk to motivate myself to write for them. Even if I don't win, and even if it's years before I ever get published, the point is that I finally feel like I'm writing for real, if that makes any sense.

And besides, I want to be carried off by the Handsome Hero. Or at least have Concerned Friends (and by that, I mean the reading public) read my stories too.