No one likes rejection.
And yet, if you’re a writer, you’re going to be rejected. Let’s face it, if you’re breathing, you’re going to be rejected.
There are times when this journey along the writing road seems to be nothing more than s-t-r-i-v-i-n-g. I’ll spend an entire day — or a succession of days — trying this and that and the other thing, hoping to ensure success. Trying to figure out how to get around the “Do Not Enter” sign blocking my way.
Read the Rest
I’m at the Deep Thinkers Retreat in Destin, Florida and it’s beautiful. We come to the beach every year in February and I help facilitate the conference for the week. My main job during the conference is the care and feeding of the attendees. But I’m also watching, listening … and yes, sometimes I hear things.
Today I wanted to share some of my observations:
Eat Well, Write Well. Sorry, a steady of diet of chocolate chip cookies and malted milk balls are not conducive to clear thinking and well developed plot lines. Although they do help stabilize emotions, at least at the moment. When all else fails, have a malted milk ball instead of a melt down. For the record, I resisted the temptation this year and only succumbed to two. (Although we have two more days to go!)
Battle Uncertainty. I’ve heard, “I thought I had my story down, but now I’m not so sure.” It’s so easy to doubt yourself and question the validity of your writing.
In his e-book, Imagination @ Work, my writing friend, author Alton Gansky, posed this question: What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
Fun question, that.
It makes you exhale all the tension – the why nots and can’ts – and breathe in all the possibilities. The tantalizng aroma of dreams.
Read the Rest
Many of you recently attended the ACFW annual conference in Indianapolis. Those who did pinned hopes on getting some sort of exciting news or opportunity. MBT Voices overall received overwhelmingly positive news. So why am I writing this? Because with the sweet comes the bitter. They always go hand in hand.
I’ve dealt with and helped people through disappointment for decades. There are some things I’ve seen in the circumstance that contributes to the emotion of disappointment that I want to share.
Having Unrealistic Expectations. Truly there are novice novelists who go to their first conference expecting that the biggest publishers in the industry will stand in line to snatch up their masterpiece…that hasn’t quite been finished. Ok, it really hasn’t been written yet, but with a contract in hand, they could stay up late one night and write it.
Read the Rest
