Serious Wednesday: The Craziness of Writing

On Passionate Writing

It is a writer's greatest pleasure

to hear that someone

was kept up until the unholy hours 

of the morn

reading

one of his books.

--B. Sanderson

Writing is the strangest

and most interesting,

besides the most misunderstood,

craziest and hardest

most frustrating--

yet satisfying talent--

or is it a curse?

career?

hobby?

job?

                                                                          purpose?

A writer will certainly dwell in stages of 

despair

discouragement

hopelessness

yet writing affords deep . . .

satisfaction and pleasure,

determination

happiness and joy 

by one act of a reader, in reading.

To the real writer, 

that is enough.

Blessings!

When I'm Discouraged . . .

I think about these famous people:

• Jack London received six hundred rejection slips before he sold his first story.
• Leo Tolstoy flunked out of college. He was described as both "unable and unwilling to learn." No doubt a slow developer.
  
• Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, was encouraged to find work as a servant by her family.
• Emily Dickinson had only seven poems published in her lifetime.
• Eighteen publishers turned down Richard Bach's story about a "soaring eagle." Macmillan finally published Jonathan Livingston Seagull in 1970. By 1975 it had sold more than 7 million copies in the U.S. alone.
  
• Twenty-one publishers rejected Richard Hooker's humorous war novel, M*A*S*H. He had worked on it for seven years.
  
• Twenty-two publishers rejected James Joyce's The Dubliners.
• Twenty-seven publishers rejected Dr. Seuss's first book, To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.
• English crime novelist John Creasey got 753 rejection slips before he published 564 books.
• William Saroyan accumulated more than a thousand rejections before he had his first literary piece published. Way to not take a hint, Bill!
• Gertude Stein submitted poems to editors for nearly 20 years before one was finally accepted. See . . . a rose is a rose.
• I bet you didn't know that John Milton wrote Paradise Lost 16 years after losing his eyesight.
  
• One of Professor Pajares's first research efforts came back with a review that began, "There are so many things I don't like about this article I just don't know where to begin."
• A professor at MIT offers a course on failure. He does that, he says, because failure is a far more common experience than success. An interviewer once asked him if anybody ever failed the course on failure. He thought a moment and replied, "No, but there were two Incompletes."
  

Quote:
Only those who dare to fail greatly can achieve greatly. ~ Robert F. Kennedy


Blessings

Equipped


I'm a writer.

Do you know how many years it took before I admitted that? Not that I didn't write. Through school and college and life and later, more schooling, I wrote. And not to brag, I always received encouraging remarks and comments. I can write.

But I hid my talent (light) under a bushel. I let it simmer on the pot all these years and never applied myself to doing something with it -- seriously.

Now, I have and am. That burning desire deep in my being has never been extinguished. I can't get away from it, nor do I want to. Life hasn't smothered it. Slowness in development hasn't discouraged it.

One thing troubles me. People don't really realize what a journey writing a novel is. What it entails, what discouragements stand smack dab in the middle of the road.

I cringe when someone asks me if I'm published yet. Or have you heard anything yet? No, no, and no. I'm working at getting traditionally published. That doesn't normally happen over night. Weeks and months and sometimes years. Rejections, and research, and study, and writing and plateaus of nothing, and more writing. More meeting editors and agents. More synopses, more outlines, more one-pages, more cards, more, more, more.

My husband is writing some children's stories (and also a prayer and fasting book). BUT he is satisfied (at least, right now) at my efforts at self-publishing his works. That's what he is targeting. Friends, neighbors, family, and some church people.

I'm targeting a harder to accomplish task of securing a traditional publisher. A broader readership. Not that I won't ever self-publish. Someday, maybe. But right now, this is what I feel I should reach for.

Here's one man's thoughts on his efforts at publishing.

When Larry Julian was trying to get a publisher for his nonfiction book, "God is My CEO," he wrote:

I had just received my 17th rejection letter, though it felt like the 187th. After that, finding the inspiration from God to work on my book was like looking for a penquin in the desert. It just wasn't there.

That day, as I sat cross-legged on the floor at Borders bookstore, I remember feeling totally insignificant and inadequate. I stared at the hundreds of leadership books. "Lord, this is impossible! How in the world am I going to have my book sitting in bookstores with these leadership giants? I can't compete with them! I don't even deserve to be on the same shelf with them. I'm sorry, Lord. What you're asking is too much."

Later that day he thought about the years he'd committed to the book-writing process, yet had nothing to show for them. He felt stuck. He'd invested too much to quit, but had absolutely no energy to move forward.

His mentor met him for lunch that day and read to him 2 Corinthians 4:7-9 "We have this treasure in vessels to show that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us. We are troubled on every side, but not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed."

His mentor said, "God tests us to display us; the devil tempts us to destroy us."

Can I empathize? You bet! Am I tested? I feel like it sometimes.

Discouraged because I hate and can't write synopses. Discouraged because I don't have an editor right this minute. Discouraged because I reach plateaus of nothingness. Discouraged because I have too much to do.

But quit? Nope. I can't and won't. No sireee.




Quote:
God doesn't call the equipped, he equips the called.


Abundant Blessings