By Will Eichler
Finding a place to share your creative writing is not an easy task by any means. Yes, many creative writing websites and online magazines are just a Google search away, but that does not mean they are going to take your writing and publish it, it doesn’t mean they are always looking for submissions, and it certainly does not mean you are going to feel confident enough in your writing to actually go through the entire process of submitting it. Sharing your writing is, at least in my experience, a deeply personal and frankly nerve-wracking endeavor. In college, I submitted some of my older poems to an online magazine and I was rejected, I submitted a short story to my university’s literary magazine and was rejected. Each rejection was discouraging, and with each one it became more and more difficult to share what I was writing with others. It was not until this past July that I actually had something of mine published by someone whom I do not work for. It is for that reason that I am grateful for Next Page Ink. Cheryl gave me a place where I could freely share what I had created, and it has pushed me to create better content so that Next Page Ink can continue to have a standard of excellence for what is being published in each issue. And now I hope it is a place that other artists who may be struggling to find a place for themselves can grow and share their work with others.