Until I Win

Recently on Twitter, one of my Twitter Buddies asked, “What scares you most about writing?” My answer, “That I’m horrible and delusional. That when I read my work and its sounds good, I must be having an episode.” His response, “I deal with that too. It’s paralyzing, isn’t it?”

And the truth is it really can be. This year has been trying. We ventured into our journey of querying our manuscript in October 2015. And we were rejected. Like a lot. Like every time. And how could this be possible? We had edited the heck out of our manuscript. We had Beta-readers that loved it, and couldn’t wait until the next book. How were we so off the mark? Well, we were and over the course of the year, we’ve learned where our shortcomings have been and have fixed them. In fact, we’re still fixing them.

Which brings me to those paralyzing moments, that my Twitter Buddy had mentioned. The ones that make you think about the wasted years and time. You question your sanity. There was a very strong flicker of darkness that made me think, “I’m ready to stop. I can’t do this anymore.” And luckily, in having a writing partner, who is my sister, she’s able to keep the faith, when mine wavers. Sometimes my drive home sound like a mini-motivational conference, my sister as my very own Tony Robbins (all that’s missing is the generic pump-up music).

Then I have my processes, which I had abandoned there for a while because I, well, forgot about them. I was listening to a motivational speech given by the awesome Les Brown, and remembered, “Oh, yeah I used to do affirmations,” and “Oh, yeah, I used to have written down goals,” and “Oh, yeah, I used to hold myself accountable.” What happened? I think. I just got tired. And had to remember that, like Les Brown says, “I’m not done until I win.”

Now, I daily declare, “I am a #1 New York Times Best-Selling Author and I speak at ComicCon.” I’m working on my weekly goals (writing this blog post is accomplishing one – yay for me!). And I’ve actually determined goals for three months, six months, and a year. The year being the hardest because sadly I had chosen not to look that optimistically into my future. I’m boldly going into the Spring of 2017 with my systems in place, I will not allow another year go wasted in the shadows.