Thursday, January 5, 2012

Jenny: 2012, The Year of Impossible Things!

I just got off the phone with my eighty-three year old grandmother. My Grandma Joy has traveled the world and taught an army of children and welcomed an untold number of strangers to her table. She’s nothing less than pure sunshine—an unfailing radiance and warmth—to just about everyone who knows her.

Just talking to her makes you brave, makes you believe in impossible things.

And O Writer of Words, you need that, don’t you? You need the courage to believe you can keep writing through fear and loneliness, through disquiet and uncertainty, through success and trial. When your query is rejected, when your book isn’t working, when the creative well runs murky or just plain dry, it may feel as though you’re lost in the thicket, a gloomy tangle where the future looks at best inscrutable, and at worst, like darkness looming.

Friends and family can support, mentors can counsel, but in the end, you are the only one who can fight your way through the muck and snarl. You are the only one who can pull yourself out of harm’s way. Day by day, page by page, you must be the one to dare the impossible, emerging as the hero of your own story.

Let this be the year. Your year.

When your book earns rejection, again and again, do the impossible. Keep writing.

When your agent quits the business, leaving you back at square one, do the impossible. Keep writing.

When your contract falls through and all other doors seem to close, do the impossible. Keep writing.

When your first (or fiftieth!) book fails to earn out and the critics call for your blood, do the impossible. Keep writing.

When your inbox spells doom and your own words mock from the page, dare to do the impossible thing, the only gambit that can rescue tomorrow. Keep writing. Keep writing. Keep writing.

And make 2012 the year of impossible things.

17 comments:

  1. If I had a glass to raise to that, I would. Hear hear!

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  2. Yes, yes, yes! It's all about finding joy in the writing, because in the end, that's all we can control.

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  3. Would comment more, but I have to get writing!

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  4. Absolutely! We must keep writing, because how can we NOT write? I haven't figured that out yet, and I don't want to. Courage is my motto for 2012. Thanks for the inspiration!

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  5. I know I'll keep writing. I do't think I have a choice in the matter.

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  6. *Cheers*
    I needed to read this, its easy to give in to fear, and that fear is what you mentioned the courage to keep writing.

    In my case I stopped querying a year and a half ago after getting multiple rejections and now I understand why the query didn't quite suck got me a few request but the mss needed plenty of polishing so I took the bull by the horns so to speak and hired an amazing editor who is also a teacher and has helped me become a stronger writer, which makes it very hard to read books these days my internal editor chimes in. I hope 2012 brings me plenty of luck after much hard work. Thank you for a great post.

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  7. Sara, I'm so glad I found your site. This post is so uplifting. I too am in my eighties, have traveled the world and taught an army of children. And, since I've had a bed and breakfast for the past 17 years, have welcomed hundreds to my table.

    I hope you'll forgive my assumed feeling of familiarity, but I felt a connection the minute I read your first paragraph.

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  8. Awww! I loved this! FABULOUS advice and encouragement.

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  9. Thanks, Jenny—I needed this. I keep writing, because I must.

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  10. Wonderfully written, Jenny! *clinks glass with yours* Here's to a wonderfully creative, improbably successful, and impossibly astounding 2012!

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  11. Thanks for all the comments! So glad to know I'm not alone, guys. We all need encouragement sometimes, in those bogs of doubt and uncertainty. I gratefully clink my glass with yours!

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  12. Oh, what good things to hear, especially on a morning when my own writing seemed so dreary and lifeless. Thank you!

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  13. Thank !I really love to read this post

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