Let me tell you this: failure is normal. Especially when you are trying to be a writer. When you love something so much, you may think that success should come easily. But that is often far from the truth. There are countless people around the world who want to write, who want to tell their stories, but once they hit an obstacle, they wonder, “Is it worth it?” Rejections hurt; it doesn’t matter if they come from that Evil Editor in your head, or if it’s in an actual rejection in e-mail form. You’ve heard the stories about the multiple rejections from those who would become successful authors, but what about in business (which is really what writing for publication is)? If you ask any successful businessperson about the path that they took to become successful, you will likely be surprised to hear about the many pitfalls, obstacles, setbacks, and outright failures that they experienced before they finally achieved success. After all, there is a reason that they say that for every t
We're all works under construction “Live fearlessly!” Sounds great, doesn’t it? Until you actually try living that way. Your common sense gets in the way— Well, I must be scared of some things, like driving too fast or stray dogs, right? Or you basically fear what living fearlessly might LOOK like: What will they think of me if I shake my ass in Zumba? These kinds of debates have been playing themselves out in my head for the past year, as I’ve been working on my memoir. Can I "Write Fearlessly?" I felt great in the beginning. I’d discovered a way to work, a type of flexible outlining Brook Warner calls “ scaffolding ” that seemed to set me out in the right direction—yes, direction! I suddenly had one. Great! On to writing. I knew the story. I mapped out the scenes. But, I suppose it is similar to the Cheryl Strayed’s Wild journey—we both knew we were a bit out of our element, but until we run splat into obstacles, we didn’t know how scary it would be.