Failure is an option here. If things are not failing you are not innovating.—Elon Musk Let’s just stipulate that I’m highly innovative. And yes: I fail. A lot. If you want to be a writer, you must brace yourself for a series of truly ridiculous cosmic bitchslaps. Never has there been an endeavor more fraught with options for failure* than deciding to write a book: you can fail at writing…
Trigger warning: depression, anxiety. People who have experienced trauma may associate the excitement of success with the same physiological reactions as trauma. They avoid subjecting themselves to excitement-inducing circumstances, which causes them to be almost phobic about success. Psychology Today This week’s topic (navigating failure) isn’t hard or scary for me, because I’ve chosen failure for so much of my life. Navigating failure is historically pretty comfortable for me….
This week we are talking about writing contests, which is going to be an interesting discussion for me because I’m here to represent the losers. Contests, while presumably wonderful if you win them, or at least receive some attention from them, are not the path to publication for some of us. I’ve entered one writing contest: Pitch Wars. It describes itself this way: Pitch Wars is a contest where published/agented…
1. Fear of Being Considered a Grey’s Anatomy Knockoff: I hear this a lot. My book contains some similarities to the TV show Grey’s Anatomy, apparently. That’s fine, especially because people love that show. For the record, though, I just wanna state: I have never, even once, watched it. I don’t like medical dramas, partly because I’ll fixate on some inaccurate detail and then ruin the show for everyone else…
This week’s Deb topic is about big decisions we’ve made as writers. I’d like to talk about that time I decided to quit writing. Back in 2015, I wore many hats. I was a stay-at-home mom of a feisty toddler. I was a wife. I was a full-time advertising copywriter, who worked remotely while also caring for my daughter. I was growing another human being. I was trying to become…
#1: If you must compete, compete against your peers. The first writing contest I ever won was for a local haiku competition my teacher entered me into. I was in the sixth grade, and my entry was: Splish! Splash! Raindrops fall Making puddles ev’ry where So that flowers grow I was thrilled to learn it won first place. Obviously, my mom was, too. We showed up at our local indie bookstore…
The thing I’m most proud of stemmed from my biggest failure. The first book I wrote and finished (before Chasing the Sun) helped me sign with my agent, but didn’t sell. Those were some dark, depressing times for me. After five years of working on that book, I felt like I’d gone so far, but hadn’t really gone anywhere. But there’s this story my brother-in-law once told me, and I remember…
It’s hard to write about scary things the day after Halloween. The ghosts and goblins have disappeared, and my pre-coffee reflection scares me more than anything else this morning. But this week’s topic calls for fear, and fear is something with which I am very familiar. When I started writing, I feared I would never write well enough for publication. I wrote anyway. When I finished each of my manuscripts,…
