Yesterday I researched the agents–luckily both authors thanked their agents by name in their acknowledgements, which made it easier. I drafted a letter, too. Then I took more notes on my Problematic Essential Character. I think I figured out how to work him in and to what degree. Now I just have to write the scenes.
Doing this kind of stuff doesn’t feel like work to me. Even the agent stuff. Despite the fact that the business side of writing has not been a strength I could claim in the past, it’s a challenge I feel ready to face in the new year. And for the first time, I have two books to pitch!
How is it that I am still in the game, writing and trying to get a novel published, well after most sensible people would have thrown in the towel? I think that it’s because this is a game I love, especially the writing end of things. I just have a passion and a commitment that rarely wavers when it comes to my writing. I love all things connected to it. Reading books. Buying books. Talking about books. Plotting stories and dreaming up characters. Messing around with sentences. I love talking craft and taking classes and teaching workshops. I adore industry gossip and watching the trends come and go. I love learning about writers’ lives, about what sparks their creativity, about how they play the game, about their hopes and dreams and rejections and wins. I truly love it all.
I am endlessly fascinated by all aspects of the writing life–this blog and my almost daily entries for more than three years proves that. And this is good because it means I have grit, the stuff it takes to succeed against the odds. The November/December issue of “Psychology Today” has a great article on grit, what it is, how to nurture it, why it’s a better indicator of future success than talent or intelligence.
“…The ability to persist in the face of obstacles is almost always an essential ingredient in major achievements,” Bottom line, writes Peter Doskoch, is that “intelligence accounts for only a fraction of success…persistence is vital.” This is good news for me, as I have always known I’m no genius. What I’ve got going for me is passion, persistence, optimism and ambition. There is a part of me that truly believes, despite the odds against it happening, that I will become a published novelist one day. Sure, some days I doubt myself. You don’t get to 50 without thinking “maybe it’s too late.” But after I let myself feel the fear and sadness of that idea–that maybe I’d work my whole life for something that would never happen–I realized that I love the journey enough to keep doing it anyway. I am passionate enough about writing to risk looking like a failure to the rest of the world.
That’s an area where I haven’t always had the grit necessary–rejection hurts and in the past it has taken me longer than it should to bounce back. I get doubtful and depressed and hold back instead of putting myself right back out there. Doskoch says that coping well with failure is key to true grit. And its one aspect of my own gritty nature I can work on improving in the new year.
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