Persistence

Question: What has writing taught me?
Answer: Persistence.

persistence |pərˈsistəns|

noun

firm or obstinate continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition : companies must have patience and persistence, but the rewards are there.

It takes discipline to write a novel. You have to keep writing on it in order to finish it. (Duh!) You have to keep editing it in order to have it completely edited. (Duh!) And you have to keep sending out queries in order to get a literary agent so that one day that novel of your's will get published.

It's all about pushing forward.

As Dory the fish so elegantly puts it: Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. What do we do? We swim, swim, swim.

Here is my favorite quote on persistence.
Isaac Asimov: "You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success--but only if you persist."

This quote is written on a yellow notecard and is taped to my wall, right above my laptop. I read it every day and live by it.

Every time I get a rejection letter back from a literary agent I send a couple more queries out. But I don't just focus on that novel that I want to get published, I work on something else too. I work on short stories for Chicken Soup for the Soul and novel #2.

I know I will get my book published one day, but the only way that's going to happen is if I keep on persisting.

Blog to you later!

Love,
Manders