Seriously, sometimes the writing life can look bleak.
It’s interesting that when it seems like an impossible goal, my non-writing friends have given me just the right encouragement at the right moment.
Once when I was in a tough writing workshop, I told a friend that it was too huge a challenge. Then she said to me, “How can you say that? You’re a parent and that’s the biggest challenge ever.” I thought about it and decided she was right. What could compare? I sailed through the rest of the workshop.
Another time, when the writing rejections were piling high, a friend who remembered that I’d published a short story right out of the gate in a popular New York magazine brought me a small gift. She cut out an article about that magazine and laminated it for me to post on my fridge. The article explained how that magazine received over 50,000 short story submissions a year and only published 30. My friend said, “Your story made it past 49,970 other competitors. Don’t think you can’t sell a story.”
The third advice I just received is timely. I’m thinking, yikes, what do I write next when I don’t have a publisher? This friend quoted a famous author. The author said he writes all the time, every day, endlessly…and only sometimes he sells something.
Whoa, even a famous author doesn’t easily find new homes for his manuscripts. It’s writing that’s important to him. Hey, that’s good enough for me.
In the meantime, I received the proof for Grim Hill: Carnival of Secrets. It looks every bit as amazing to me as the other Grim Hill books. I’ll post soon when it’s available!
Carnival of Secrets 