Women of Mass Dissemination

The Women of Mass Dissemination have been meeting for almost ten years. To us, this is extraordinary…in part because we still haven’t achieved everything we set out to do, in spite of that huge time…and in part because we have in that time achieved an amazing amount.

We formed as a group to provide support and create resources as we all worked to get published. Has every one of us published a book? No. Or I should say, not YET.

But we have seen each other through many successes, and have kept ourselves and each other on track through the rough seas of rejection and near-misses and self-doubt and all the rigors of competing in the literary “marketplace.” And we have seen such progress!

Two of us have published single-author poetry collections. Three of us have produced award-winning chapbooks as a collective effort, and then a three-author themed volume of poems as well. Chapbooks abound. Individual poems have come out in journals–great journals, many of them. Four novels have been written, and just the other night we celebrated the one that has been published, holding it in our hands and, you guessed, it laughing and crying and toasting like crazy.

Grants received. Sabbaticals awarded. Studios built. Retreats organized (for ourselves). Writing prompts. Research. Data base creation. Website recommending. Litmag sharing. Deadline reminding. Goal setting. Vow swearing.

And a lot–a LOT–of hand-holding, back-patting, encouraging as we all trudge up the I-Want-to-Publish mountain.

Somehow we keep coming back to the question: so if it can be so discouraging, WHY am I doing this? I thought I’d let each of the WMDs share her thoughts separately on this.