Bloom like an Artist

I first saw this link on the http://www.jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/ blog and I love it!

http://www.nettserier.no/jellyvampire/1304892000/

Anon,

Nancy

Born like an Artist

I love this. Janet Reid posted this to her blog yesterday (http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com ) It's awesome.

http://www.nettserier.no/jellyvampire/1304892000/



Anon,

Nancy

The Wait

The wait for an agent or editor to respond to a query, the wait for someone to accept your work; those are some of the most frustrating things we deal with as writers. We rack up countless rejections as we toil in quiet desperation. Sometimes it helps to know we are not alone. Some of the most successful authors struggled to get their work published.

Theodor Geisel’s first picture book, To Think It happened on Mulberry Street, was rejected 29 times before it was finally accepted for publication. His books have since sold over 100 million copies.

John Grisham's A Time to Kill was repeatedly rejected. He now has over 60 million copies of his novels in print. Pearl S. Buck's Pulitzer Prize winning book The Good Earth was rejected something like 14 times.

What if Ted Geisel only sent out 28 queries, imagine growing up NOT reading A Cat in The Hat? Or Horton Hears a Who or dare I say it, The Lorax. Can you imagine not seeing someone sitting in an airport reading A Time to Kill, or The Client or The Pelican Brief? If these authors stopped short of their goal, that's what might have happened. Hard to believe. So what does it take to get published in this ever-changing, unforgiving world of publishing?

Perseverance: that dogged pursuit of a goal in spite of the obstacles. I think a great representation of perseverance is in this Jacob Riis quote:

I'd look at one of my stone cutters hammering away at the rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet, at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I knew it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

-Jacob August Riis

So hang in there, fellow writers!

Anon,

Nancy

Setting Goals

I swam competitively for 15 years. I started when I was seven years old and stopped when I completed my last year of eligibility in college. During that time, I spent many early mornings crawling out of bed at the crack of daylight - sometimes before, to head off to the pool for morning practice. All this in the months of December, January and February. The water seems colder that early in the morning. I doubt I could have gotten myself up to the pool on those cold mornings if I hadn't set goals for myself.

At the beginning of every season, I'd figure out what I wanted to achieve for that season and what it would take to get me there. I'd plaster my goal times all over my bedroom and doodle my times in the margins of my notebooks in class. No doubt it was a commitment to those goals that got me out of bed and to the pool when I'd rather be fast asleep dreaming of sandy beaches and young men with margaritas in their hands.

With writing, I now do the same thing. While it's a bit harder to determine the timeline of my goals these days, I still write down my goals and focus my attention on achieving them. Sometimes this means working on the craft of writing; other times it means improving my research techniques. Whatever form they may come in, my goals are still important to my success. They keep me going when I'd rather be doing something else. I know one day they will pay off in the ultimate goal of landing a publishing contract.

Anon,

Nancy

Picture from http://www.wittenberg.edu/ Wittenberg Tigers website