This post can also be found on the Fictorians blog site, where the theme this month is celebrating the greatest gifts we’ve received as writers.  Check out the other excellent posts there.

I love the theme this month and the stories that have been shared.  It reminds me that we all struggle in life and in our chosen profession.  I do wonder if any non-writers reading these posts might assume we’re all lunatics sharing our stories in an online Writers Anonymous meeting.  We’ve proven it’s a tough, crazy journey on the road toward publication, but we keep plugging away, pursuing the dream, chanting, “Keep at it, and we’ll get there.” Well, we’ll get there as long as we’re open to learning and growing.  As they say, “Continuing to do the same thing while expecting different results is the definition of insanity.”

So we’re either on our way, or we’re nuts.

Growing up I always dreamed of being a writer and I hand-wrote hundreds of pages of drafts as a teen-ager.  But life got in the way and I pretended to be normal and pursued other interests through college and the first years of family and career.  Then through a series of events in 2004 the desire – the need – to write reignited, and I embraced all those imaginary friends I’d been pretending not to listen to for so long.

I remembered some cool ideas I had worked on all those years ago and thought, “Yeah, I’ll just write that.  I read a lot, so how hard could it be?”

Now almost ten years and millions of words later, I laugh every time I think of that naïve wannabe writer sitting down and typing out those first words, “It was a dark and stormy night. . .”

Actually, those weren’t the first words, but they might as well have been for how terrible they were.  But I didn’t know better so I wrote, and then I re-wrote.  For almost four years I worked on that monstrous first novel that stood at about 300,000 words despite multiple re-drafts.  I confidently sent out query letter after query letter to agents, and accumulated scores of rejection letters.

A wiser man might have quit at that point.

Actually, a wise man would have quit after his wife read the first frantically written 80 pages the very first weekend.  With love in her eyes, she said as kindly as she could manage, “This stinks.”

But real writers are slaves to the Muse, or we are tired of people looking at us funny when we talk to ourselves.  Or maybe we’re just a lot more stubborn than most people, so I kept writing.  The problem was I had no idea why the book wasn’t selling.  I had no clue what was wrong with it.  I mean, my mom loved it, so it had to be ready.

I didn’t even understand enough about writing to work on other projects on the side.  I was blind, stuck in a place I could not get out of, but didn’t realize it.  Think Maxwell Smart, but without Agent 99 to bail him out.

Thankfully I found a way out of that rut of insanity.  I took the Professional Writers Workshop from David Farland.

Amazing.  What a revelation.  They actually train people to write!  I’d been doing it all by pure gut instinct for years, and proving why there was a better way.  In that writing workshop, Dave took the time to meet with me over dinner and discuss my project.  Using small words, he explained some of the reasons why the book would never work – like it was waaaay too long.  I learned many things in that class and some of my blind spots were revealed.

What a milestone!  I finally understood some of the reasons why I was not yet successful.

If I were really humble, I would have appreciated that much honest insight into my many writing flaws.  What really slapped me in the face though was the magnitude of the challenge I faced:  Either walk away from the entire writing gig, angry that the industry didn’t understand a brilliant talent like mine – walk away offended and console my wounded pride by thinking “they’re just not ready for so much pure awesomeness.”