Polishing Gems by Sue Potts

(Editor’s Note: Sue Potts is our guest columnist this month, specially asked by Carlton Hughes.)

While on vacation in the Smoky Mountains, when my daughter was young, we stopped at a gem mine. We bought our bag of dirt and took it and a sifting screen to the trough of water. The dirt washed away from the sifter, leaving behind gems and small colored stones. My little girl was delighted with each sparkle in her sifter. We collected out gems wiped them off and put them in a pouch to carry them home. We didn’t find anything valuable, but it was a fun experience.

Even though we did wipe the gems off, it would have been a much different story if we had thought for one second that we had found a gem of great value. We would have carefully picked it up, polished it and proudly shown it to someone who knew more than we did to find out the worth of our treasure. We wouldn’t have just thrown it into a pouch. We would have taken great care to make sure that it got into the right hands.

Often, we treat our writing as if it not valuable. Let’s face it; sometimes we have a lot of sifting to do to get through to the good stuff. What do we do when we finally find something that sparkles? Do we just throw it in a pouch? I have a lot of pouches, how about you? I bet you have some of the same ones I do, desk drawers, notebooks, file cabinets, and flash drives?

Let’s treat our writing as a precious gem that we polish until it shines. Let’s put the effort into making sure our gem is ready to be presented. Sometimes the editing process gets tedious, but it is an important step if our editors, publishers, and readers are going to see our writing as a treasure.

One thing is for sure no one will ever know that we have something of value if we keep it hidden in our pouch. So, get out that polishing rag and start looking for those treasures.

BIO

Sue Davis Potts is a freelance writer from Huntingdon, Tennessee. She is mother to her beautiful college-age daughter, Jessa. Sue enjoys writing for both children and adults. She worked for years as a preschool teacher but feels most at home these days with other writers who speak her language. She has been published in local magazines, anthologies, Ideals, Southern Writer’s Magazine and Focus on the Family’s children’s magazines Clubhouse and Clubhouse, Jr.

She authored a children’s library book and her book of short motivations 101 Life Lessons From Uno (The One-Legged Duck) is available on Amazon. Her blog, Potts Pages, can be found on her website, www.suedavispotts.com.