I have never been a big risk taker. If you’re coming here from a link Twitter or from Facebook (which most of you will be), you may have noticed that on Monday I tweeted/posted a status claiming that this is the year I take risks. A few of you have asked what I’m talking about, correctly surmising that I had something specific in mind.
If you look at my bio on Twitter, I call myself a “wannabe author.” I want to change “wannabe” to “published.” That means I have to take some risks, and probably get rejected. A lot. Maybe forever.
Nobody likes being rejected, right? It’s been relatively rare in my life (the great 0-for-all-of-2011 slump notwithstanding) that I have been. I don’t know that my “fragile” psyche could take having a manuscript rejected countless times. At the same time, I think my giant ego needs somebody out there to tell me, “your writing sucks.” Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that several of you have read some of my writing and enjoyed it–without it I would not even consider doing what I’m about to do.
What the heck am I doing, anyway? I’m writing another short story/flash fiction and submitting it to the Georgia Review. They publish quarterly. I think to have any shot to grow as a writer, I need someone that has no biases towards or against me to read something I’ve written and tell me that it isn’t good enough for them. Hopefully, they’ll give some tips for improvement, too. I don’t know. Taking a chance is something that is very out of character for me, but, holy cow, what if my writing actually goes somewhere? I owe it to myself to grow as a writer and learn as much as I can about the process, right?
I’m a bit of an accomplished poker player, trying to look at this in a way that makes sense to me. The way to play winning poker in the long term is to know your odds and fold/play based on either expected value or pot odds. If the expected value of a play is positive, you play. It doesn’t mean you win every hand, or every session, but over the long term, you will. What exactly do I have to lose by doing this other than the cost of a couple of envelopes and a couple of stamps? That’s a positive expected value, in my book.
I’d be a fool NOT to….
Right?
*my apologies if I rambled and stopped making sense — it’s 6am and I haven’t even had any caffeine yet.
Beau Barnett's blog 
Beau, i first read your pinky-swear and kinda liked it. I wanted to comment but didn’t wanted to disappoint since I’m nothing close to writer, let alone the published-writer! but today I’d like to say, you have something and I’d love to see you not giving up. man, to me, you write what you write, never bother for what those pot head publishers say! I know, with a little bit of luck, someday you’ll get published but hey! I see you’ve already got an audience who care to read what you write, no matter how small the chunk is. Never give up man! Whatever the risk is, every bit of it is worthy much more!
Best of luck with the Georgia Review. 🙂