Never Surrender, Never Give Up
Today I was reading through a successful author’s blog. They told the story of how they got their first book sold. It was an amazing story. They hadn’t written in years, the story just came to them, they wrote it in only a few months, and against all odds it was sold to wild acclaim.
Now… at the risk of sounding whiny… why doesn’t that happen to me?! I want a story to just come to me, to flow out of my fingers. I want to send it in and have an agent call ME to request to represent me. I want to have others read my writing and love it.
After reading this web page, I got a little bit down for a little bit. I think I can write, I think I can do this book. But reading that page made me feel like I would never have that kind of luck. So I say this: NO! I will not give up. I can make it. If I don’t get lucky, I can still work hard. So, I return to the grind stone to try to write that next page.
Oh, and at my husband’s suggestion, I’m listening to Pandora Radio, which is very inspirational and helpful.
26 Feb 2008 Sarah
I like Pandora, but Finetune I like more. You can make your own playlists! It is less random but you can listen to the songs you like.
I understand your reasons for liking Finetune… but it’s for those precise reasons that I like Pandora. I usually don’t know the songs they play, so they’re less distracting. Making the playlists takes a while, too, and I want to use all that time for writing. Sometimes Finetune would be fun, but Pandora fits my needs today.
I’ve had the experience where I had to quickly think of a topic to speak or write about, and even though I had to skim over most things to just get a basic understanding of what I was going to say or write, the talk or piece of writing was pretty much my best ever. There is something to be said about thinking quickly in preparation and then not thinking when it’s time to deliver. I think you wrote a related post about not judging what you write before or while or after you write it. I think this is kind of the same concept.
And Pandora rocks. Me gusta.
Very true, Ryan. I need to remember that I can mess up. The more I write, the more I actually get down on paper, the more I improve and the more my writing improves. Besides, I can’t write a book without first writing a sentence. Planning is a fantastic idea as well.