I have written often here about finding the time to write and trying to negotiate life around inspiration. I met with Kent Nerburn this winter, an acquaintance of mine who I’ve been doing web work for. I had the incredible opportunity of meeting him several years ago when he was one of our judges for the Talking Stick. He just won a Minnesota book award and, quite frankly, is one of my idols. We sat down to discuss him bringing back some of his older titles into the digital age and we also talked about writing and books. He was wonderfully excited for me and my newest book release and he gave me some advice I will never forget, “Start writing your next book immediately. Do it NOW before the reviews come back on your finished book.”

I had no idea how true that statement was and how important it is to get on that second book before someone can destroy you for your current title. You don’t get to reply to reviews and, though most of mine have come back both tactful and positive, I did get a bad one and it did cut me. I want so badly to email them back and just say, “That was not the right reviewer for my book!” Because, quite frankly, our very favorite books would not sit well with some others, in fact, some people would hate them. I’ve found that most review sites make a real effort to match books with the right reviewers, but it doesn’t always work that way.

On top of the one bad review (which I’ve already licked my wounds over) and several folks on forums who clearly make it their nighttime hobby to hate, I’ve found it hard to get my ass back to writing. I find though that its not the percentage of negative that I’ve received (I certainly expected that), instead its the exhaustion of putting myself in such a vulnerable position in the first place. What happened to that girl in me who would write no matter what? Frankly, there’s a part of me now that wonders: What’s the point? If all of my efforts will not pay off in any way (and I don’t even mean money-wise) then why write? If no one will ever get the chance to know that it exists and read it, what’s the point? If I’ve applied everything I know and have read about getting a “product” out there and its just not happening, what is the point?

I think writers are reclusive by nature. One of the hardest things I find that I need to do daily with a book release is sell my book and, essentially, sell myself. I’m just not any good at it and I’m very good at focusing on the negative. Even with the many positives I’ve received back about my book, I have a hard time dealing with rejection, I just want to scream, “Come on!! Give it a chance for fuck’s sake!”

Anyway, I’ve also always had a hard time balancing my writing time with the time I want to spend with the people that I love. It doesn’t help at all that I’m finally home and missed six years of the time I should have been out playing and dancing and meeting new people. Six years to the wind, in that six years is when I did the majority of my writing: simply as something to keep me company: simply as something to pass the long hours as I counted down to returning home again. Now I find that I not only NEED to find a new way mentally to get myself writing again but that I MUST or I may never convince myself to really write for writing’s sakes again.

So, in my head, I’m working on it, when can I write? When do I want to write? And, in the end, do I even want to or has this book release experience finally convinced me that writing is a lost cause in my life? That I should, maybe without a doubt, grow up, and start pursuing a “real” career? What a shame if that’s the truth but am I going to keep pursuing this just because its too much of a shame to quit after all this time? Or should I see it from a different point of view, maybe I should quit now before I waste more time on it? Both questions make me very sad. I try to call on myself, answer the question! Do you want to keep writing?

The simple answer is Yes. The more real answer is Not like this. What happened to that girl that knew this would be very hard (and that’s not common sense but experience talking – having been in the editorial and publishing world since 2001) and knew she would keep writing anyway? I think it’s not only the rejection aspect but the let down, don’t we all just secretly hope somewhere along the way hard work will pay off and things will somehow, someway, get better? Or is it the main simple fact that that is what we’ve been fed as kids (and by the media telling us about the one in a million story) and that’s just not life ever and not at all for the most of us. And how do we move on from that realization and keep going knowing that the likely hood is nothing will come of it? How do we keep writing?

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