Kristi Thompson My Slice Guess what? I’ve had an epiphany. Another one, you ask? I know. I’ve already had one, which I duly recorded in “My Epiphany Atop a Double-Decker Bus” for the BBC My Story competition. I should be content, right? Especially since it reached #1 in the Most Liked category, before its meteoric decline. But apparently I’m not the epiphogamous type. I had to go and have another one.

Without further ado, I will tell you of my warmest slice of the epiphany pie, using yet another metaphor, if you will allow me.

We new writers, unpublished ones at least, seem to be waiting for someone: an agent, a publisher, a magazine editor, someone to cut us a piece of their pie, to offer it to us, on a plate, with a napkin, preferably one of those cute printed ones.  We slave away writing, polishing and submitting but all of our hours might as well be molecules of air, if we’re not published by one of these Someones mentioned above. If you’re anything like me, you’re at their party, standing in the back with your thighs pressed up against the dessert table and your eyes glued to that tantalizing Published Pie. You’re drooling for a slice but too afraid, or feeling bloated by your Its-not-my-place indigestion, to cut yourself a piece.

Others at the party: published writers, agents, editors, publishers, or bloggers, are coming and going, helping themselves, chatting away, wine in hand, and in general having a blast.

Look— There’s Audrey Niffenegger out on the dance floor with Sarah Gruen. Wow, they can sure Limbo! You cheer, from your spot, as if glued there, still waiting for someone to help you. “How Low Can You Go!” you shout with the rest of the happy crowd. You want desperately to join in, but you’re too afraid to leave, lest the hostess walks up the very second you’re gone and offer to “get someone a slice”, thus losing your one chance of being served that mouth watering Published Pie.

So what is my epiphany? I learned to serve myself. Sure, I won’t be able to walk into just anyone’s house and help myself to their refrigerator. Harper Collins might call the police. But there are other parties I’m more than welcome to join. Competitions, or on-line websites looking for submissions, for instance. Many are posted right here on Inkwell’s website or in the brilliant Inkwell Newsletter. Some of those parties will even offer you a microphone to sing karaoke, as the BBC My Story offered me when they posted my submission online. I discovered the BBC competition, by the way, via the blog of an Inkwell instructor, Beth Morrissey, Hell or High Water. Great title.

I’ve also learned to throw my own shin-dig, by starting my own blog—a suggestion by a fellow Inkwellian, Elizabeth Rose Murray, over lunch a few months ago. Thus birthing How Did You Get There, a compilation of light hearted interviews with ordinary people about their not so ordinary lives. By designing my own blog, I’m actually setting the tone of my own party, developing my own voice, which for me means Humour. Turns out I’ve concocted my own recipe for Published Pie, with a generous helping of nuts. One pleasant outcome has been its viewing by at least one major US agent, who e-mailed, “Thanks for sharing.” I mean, how much more can a person say ‘I LOVE YOUR BLOG, IT ROCKS!’ than that!?

OK, there are hundreds of better, far less dubious ways, but that’s beside the point. I’m building a presence as a writer; I’m being noticed.

My blog and entering competitions are some of the many things I’ve learned from the Master of the Universe, Vanessa, who through her brainchild, Inkwell, has taken all this to a whole new level. She’s not only throwing her own party, she offers to throw parties for others. Her reach is truly inspiring. Theoretical physicists, I hear, are trying to calculate it as we speak, just after they figure out how many alternate universes there are.

Yes, I am continually submitting to agents and publishers, too. Like a wedding crasher I get all gussied up and go to countless agents’ parties trying to grab me a piece of their Published Novel Pie. But I don’t get stuck in the corner, as if that’s the only gig in town. I’m dancing at my own party. See? That’s me with the big piece of pie smeared all over her face. “How Low Can You Go!”

What’s my novel, Can’t Get You Out of My Mind, about? It’s an Interplanetary Rom Com, about a young librarian who reads self help books on the sly until she becomes inexplicably consumed with self hatred. Her attempts to end it all are thwarted by a man whom she believes to be a cute, if highly delusional stalker. Ultimately, her struggle to find herself takes her to a place she refuses to believe in…where the fun begins!