Writing: A lesson in perseverance

It’s been quite a long time since I updated my blog. Sorry. Yes. I am still plugging away and no, I still haven’t sent in my MS. I've had three or four deadlines for myself and have passed each one up. Damn life gets in the way. I can see how writers would like to barricade themselves in a cabin in the woods or by the beach and write/live/eat/sleep with their stories. But alas, this luxury is not allowed to most of us. Most of us have jobs that pay the bills. We have families, husbands, pets and children. All of which require our attention and gets in the way. Yes, we love them but they do get in the way no matter how you look at it and that’s where perseverance comes in. The ability to get on the move again when life deals you something else.

It's also when you feel like you’re writing poorly and you still push when you want to quit but you still tell your story. If you’ve ever had to put yourself on paper you know what I mean. You pour your soul out. I laugh with my characters, I cry with them, it's exhausting...

I can't tell you what it's like to push forward and write. It's one of the hardest things I've ever attempted. It's like putting your innards on paper for all to see and critique. One day I read something that I wrote and I say to myself, "Wow, that's actually good." The next day I could read the same paragraph and say, "What a piece of crap! Who's gonna wanna read this crap?"

You have to push past your own resistance and self-sabotaging ways and continue. I recently read a great book, "the WAR of ART," by Steven Pressfield. If you are struggling with pushing through a difficult time in any given task I recommend that you read it.

Well, there seems to be light at the editing tunnel and hope to send my MS out by late February, hoping the editor still wants it. I know it's a been some months since she requested it but I couldn't send her something less than my best. And it's a good possibility that my best will get rejected but like I said earlier, I will just have to persevere some more and find someone who won't reject it and then write another one and so on...