Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. – Thomas Edison I’m not trying to invent anything so groundbreaking as electricity. This saying applies to all goals. There are so many other responsibilities, worthwhile efforts, and entertaining possibilities competing for our limited time. It’s easy to let other endeavors become bigger priorities and gradually bump your goal away without actually ever deciding to give up. Stay focused and accountable. My writing critique group (that's us in the picture with a few of our published books) is wonderful to keep me on track. Every month I submit 25 new pages and receive feedback from six other writers, each with unique backgrounds and strengths. I’m so grateful for all of them. It’s a bonus that I love their writing. What are my writing goals? Keep writing, keep improving, and sell more books. What are your goals and what do you do to keep focused on them?
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Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open. - Alexander Graham Bell
If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time. - Steve Jobs
One of my favorite local writers, Tommy Tomlinson, spoke at the Charlotte Writer’s Club Meeting yesterday. He left us with some great advice, and I’m feeling a little prophetic because my last blog post was about number one.
1 –. Don’t give up. A huge chunk of people will quit the first time things gets hard, i.e. the first rejection. Another group will quit the second time it is hard, and a third bunch will quit the third time. The people who persevere often succeed over the most talented. The more important talent becomes the perseverance skills. So, if you stick around long enough, chances are you’ll rise to the top because everyone else has quit while you have kept improving. This applies to any endeavor. 2 – He tells students in his writing classes to make a list of everything that scares them. These are the things that you should write about because they are the things that matter to you. And if you don’t want to write about what scares you, writing about what pisses you off will work just as well. 3) If you’re going to publish anything, be prepared to navigate through some nasty feedback. “Some people are very skilled at being cruel.” How sad but unfortunately, true. Interesting thoughts, that echo my last post, from an article by Dannye Romine Powell about author, Wiley Cash, who teaches a fiction class at UNC-Asheville. Cash tells his students “All of you are already better writers than I was. You know your craft better. You’re better read. You have better ideas. The question is: How bad do you want it? Are you willing to play one less video game to allow yourself one more hour of writing time? Are you willing to wake up one hour earlier to allow yourself to work on your story? What are you willing to give up?” An perhaps the most difficult: “ Are you willing to endure years of rejection?”
His question, “How bad do you want it?” applies to just about anything we want out of life. My educational and professional experiences convinced me that those who persevere end up being successful, even if they’re not necessarily the most talented. Being extremely smart, or extremely creative or extremely fast, whatever the talent may be, is a gift, but it will only take a person so far. Completing a novel, like so many other endeavors, has more to do with one’s level of commitment than one’s level of creativity. "I have a great idea for a book. How can I get started?"
I hear that from at least one person at every author event. My advice is to stop thinking about doing it and “Just do it”. Writing a book is similar to training for a marathon, except that it’s going to take a lot longer. Decide to commit, and then sit down in front of your computer, or a pen and paper, and put in the time. Not every day, but most days, if you can. Just like training for a marathon, there will be days where you feel invincible and your creativity is through the roof, and there will be days where you wonder what you were thinking because you’re positive you can’t write and you’ll never get it done. The most important thing is to keep at it. A terrible first draft chapter is still a better starting place for the next day than nothing at all. Of course there is a whole lot to learn along the way, but that will come gradually and naturally as you become more involved in the effort. If you want to write a book, you can. Part of the contract on my first book requires me to have a website, which is why I have one now. I used up a few day's worth of time trying to make it. It was exciting up until the point that I started to build it on my actual computer. That's when the fun stopped. It was frustrating. My first mistake was to explore some "best of" sites and then design my ideal, perfect site on paper. Unfortunately a first time web site builder is not going to be able to duplicate a professionally built site on the first go around or even the second or third. I used two different site building apps and completely scrapped my efforts on each before I found one with click and drag functions, which was the best fit for my level of patience with this sort of thing. Inevitably things can and will go wrong with any project, but when technical related things go wrong it's sort of a nightmare for me. Each and every "simple fix" came with a short but steep learning curve.
"Just clear out your cookies and then log in again." Yea right, because I know exactly what you're talking about when you say that Mr. help line guy. Luckily no one else was home or they would have heard me making sarcastic and unbecoming comments. For the record, everyone I spoke to at BlueHost was exceptionally kind and patient and any technical site that offers 24 hour help and they actually answer the phone is an excellent one. I can not say the same thing about the other hosting companies, one of which still has not responded to my emails asking very specific questions that were not in the help section documents. Nice of me not to name names. I stuck with it, determined to do this myself rather than pay someone because I wanted to able to make updates on my own. I didn't know that once published it can not be hidden again, so I accidentally published it and here it is, a work in progress. Next step - building LinkedIn profile and hopefully having time to write a little. |
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