Tweet Do you know the mirage? The place that looks like a gorgeous lake, but is really a glorified puddle? This is everything we post on social media-the fancy writer gig, our new book, and all the writer activities we’re apart of. It’s all nice and sparkling. Everyone watching wants to jump right in. The problem with mirages is that they’re not real. Perhaps, all of that is true. But it puts observers on the outside, it separates us, and makes us feel alone. If you pan out from the image, you’d see that we’re all watching the mirage-that vast…
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Tweet All artists have trouble with their egos. Maybe it’s because unlike other fields, our sense of self and our creation are personally intertwined in a beautiful, yet complicated relationship. We often get defensive when editors pick away at our prose. And when finally hitting send on that perfect piece we spent days on, we’ve never felt more vulnerable. That’s why it hurts so much when we’re rejected. It’s not just an attack on our work, but it feels like an attack on our soul. But allowing our egos to get wrapped up in our work isn’t just unrealistic and…
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Tweet There’s always a reason to give up. Let me count the ways. Your mounting bills, the bad economy, the competition, your lack of time, fear of rejection, there’s already enough books out there, your stuff’s no good, no one will read it, you hate feeling vulnerable, etc. And it doesn’t get easier. They ebb and flow, rising as your confidence rises. They strengthen as your courage deepens. In fact, the more you grow, the greater the challenges become. Over time you either grow accustomed to them or you begin to listen. If you choose the latter, you may lose…
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Tweet Something pulled me from my warm bed and hour of mindless magazine reading today. I was thinking about my last post. I was thinking about how Walt Disney encountered a lot of bad people in the biz and still waded in his way through the slime and got to the other side. In fact, not just in spite of the greedy people out there but because he had resilience. There are many traits important in having a successful freelance writing business and I definitely think resilience is one of them. Resilience helps you keep going. It’s what helped Olympic…