Tag Archives: discourage

Technique, Publishing

K is for Keep on keepin’ on

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Yesterday, we talked about jumping in to write. You don’t have to wait for permission or a signed certificate or an engraved invitation: just do it.

Sometimes starting is the hardest part. Lots of people find staring at that blank page intimidating. (Not me: it’s the words that scare me 😉 ). But sometimes it’s not starting: it’s going on.

Good writers make writing look easy, but it’s not. Things worth doing, and worth doing well, seldom are. Writing takes perseverance. Publishing takes even more. It’s easy to get discouraged and feel like you’ll never get this word/scene/book right, or you’ll never get published.

But I like to tell myself the biggest difference between a published author and an unpublished one is persistence. Every athlete and every artist has stories of adversity, whether it’s from opposition from those around them (check) or struggling to better themselves (check). Every time we move past one of those, we get stronger and better—and closer to our goals—as long as we don’t let it defeat us. We gotta keep on keepin’ on.

What do you think? How has opposition helped you get better?

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Technique

A story of perseverance

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I’m in an inspirational mood this week. (Or maybe I’m just procrastinating working on my latest round of revisions. I don’t know.)

Sometimes, we all get the “Am-I-crazies?”, as Nathan Bransford calls them. Publishing is a long slog, and sometimes it doesn’t feel like it’s worth it to keep pounding away at that novel that no one might read.

Today we get a story, and it’s not about a writer. Once upon a time, there was a man who decided to become an actor. He did all the requisite things at the time: signed a contract with a studio for bit parts on television, pulled in a regular salary as an extra in mostly non-credited and non-speaking roles. After five years without any real progress, he learned a trade to support his family. But he wasn’t ready to give up on his dream.

His trade brought him into contact with up-and-coming directors—directors who gave him small,but good parts in their films. Each contact, and each role, probably felt like a big break, but after another five years, he was still mostly playing one-off characters who didn’t even warrant a last name on television shows. Still, he wasn’t ready to give up:

I realized early on that success was tied to not giving up. Most people in this business gave up and went on to other things. If you simply didn’t give up, you would outlast the people who came in on the bus with you.

After a decade of trying to make it, one of those up-and-coming directors hired him to read lines with other actors auditioning for parts in his next movie. Eventually, that director came to really like the way our hero interpreted one character in particular, and cast him in the role.

Yeah, the crew thought the film was a B-movie joke at best, some of the cast believed the film would fail, and even our hero thought the film was “weird.” The dialogue sucked (our hero helped improve it). The director didn’t like the style of the cinematographer—or, it seemed, the actors. Production and post-production problems pushed back the release by months. By all accounts, it looked like the movie wouldn’t do much for our hero’s career before it was finally released, 33 years ago yesterday.

You might have heard of the film. Our hero played a guy called Han Solo.

What do you think? What are you favorite inspirational stories or quotations?

quotation via The Ruby-Slippered Sisterhood

Photo by Joe Flood

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Publishing

Getting discouraged

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Sometimes it just seems like it’ll never happen. The black marks on the page are going to beat you again, and this work will never be publishable. Or even readable. Or you’ve queried and rewritten and queried and rewritten until you don’t even recognize your story anymore, and still no bites. Or you’ve snagged a killer agent and whipped that MS into shape, but no news really isn’t good news.

We all get discouraged sometimes. I was feeling discouraged a few weeks ago, right before I attended a writing conference last month. It was so good to be reminded that perseverance pays off in publishing, as in just about everything else. And here’s the visual reminder they shared at the conference:

Remember: don’t give up! Surrendering to discouragement is the surest way to fail.

What do you think? How do you recharge when you feel discouraged?

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