What I find most motivational during those dark hours of self-doubt is reading what other writers have to say. Summer invaded. Visitors. Camping trips. Family. And my writing went the way of dead spring flowers—faded, dismissed but never forgotten—praying for a rain endowed wind or a hungry bird to escort them to fertile fields. My […]
As I mentioned in my last blog post, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, John Kennedy Toole (1937-1969), committed suicide at thirty-one. His demise can be credited to one rejection from a major publisher. Toole’s rejection—given by Simon & Schuster’s senior editor Robert Gottlieb—went like this: … with all its wonderfulnesses, the book—even better plotted (and still better […]
I’m often asked: How do you do it? How do you keep writing after the rejections? Of course, only my writer friends ask me this question. My regular friends are unaware of my inner struggles. And I would say that most people don’t realize the struggle a writer faces day after day unless these people […]
