How to fail and keep on writing

Last time we talked about how to select the genre for your piece.  Now, we’re going to talk about how to select your market. You may be tempted to send your work to markets you know you can get into.  I don’t recommend this.  I believe you should always send your work to the markets

We broke off last time at getting your ducks in a row…before you even start writing. I know, I know, you probably won’t take my advice right away. “Surely,” you’ll say, “It’s not necessary to do all THAT before I write a story. I need to be creative! Right! Now!” But that’s exactly why you

So I’ve talked you into it.  You’re committed to writing those 10 million new words (or however many you have left, give or take a million).  You’re committed to sending your submissions out. But, if you’re like I was, you’re not really sure how to go about it. How do you get a ton of

I’ve talked about why failing so hard, why we aren’t failing enough, talent vs. hard work, and success. Not that I get a huge number of comments on a post or anything, but I got a lot fewer comments on the success post than I did on anything else.  People like to talk smack about

I’ve talked about why failing is so hard and that we need to give ourselves more opportunities to fail, if we’re going to succeed.  I’ve talked about the idea that we need to be talented writers instead of hard workers and how useless it is. Now it’s time to talk about success. What is success?

Smart.  Talented.  Special.  Gifted.  Bright. Stupid.  Unskilled.  Ordinary.  Average.  Dull. If you’re not one, you must be the other, right? No:  there’s a third set of descriptions that’s better than both of the ones above, and it goes like this: Hard worker.  Dedicated.  Pays attention.  Asks questions.  Practices. Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I am going to

When do we fail as writers? Logically, we fail when we don’t fail, that is, when we don’t try.  It’s like the lottery:  you can’t win if you don’t play. The odds of winning the Powerball Grand Prize are 1 in 195,249,054. The odds of winning the $3 ticket are 1 in 61.74.  There are

I don’t know…I have visions of people breaking down in tears…”How could you say something so harsh?!?” — What’s a normal response to failure? Upset, despair, grief, horror, shame…? What’s an abnormal response to failure? Celebration!  Amazement!  Breaking out the champagne! And so we try to avoid failure and gravitate toward success, because failure feels