By Ashley Perez
What a blast it was to host a WWS party at my home on July 11, 2015. I had only been to one WWS meeting before and due to a constant conflicting schedule, I knew the only way I would get to another one would be to host it. I have also had little chance to have people over to my new digs so it served a dual purpose.
The main things I took out of hosting are the two primary words out of this group: WOMEN and SUBMITTING. It felt really good to be among a group of women who are amazingly smart, talented, and funny. It was an amazing atmosphere of solidarity and encouragement.
The second part is submitting. I was working on a huge grant application so I did not submit any stories but a friend of mine who came to the meeting, who had only ever submitted once before, ended up submitting to four different journals. We had over 16 (I think) submissions that day and that made me feel like this amazing group of women were kicking all of the asses and taking over the world.
It also reinforced the fact that I need to get to work. I am not always very productive with my writing (and therefore not submitting) and to hear a round of thunderous applause every time a submission was done helped kick my creative determination up another notch.
That is what is at the heart of this group and their mission and what was made abundantly clear to me during this meeting. It doesn’t matter what my own personal insecurities were (i.e. I suck, I am not a writer, I’ll never submit) because there was a strong group of women surrounding me who would kindly tell me I was wrong, to shut the fuck up, and get back to it, so they too can cheer for me.
* * *
Ashley Perez lives, writes, and causes trouble in Los Angeles. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. She runs the literary site Arts Collide and does work of all varieties for Bleed at Jaded Ibis Press, The Rumpus, The Weeklings, and Midnight Breakfast.
