Accepting Success
Congratulations to client and friend Cathey Nickell on landing a literary agent for her middle-grade novel A Night Without Light! It’s a huge, well-deserved milestone on Cathey’s writing path. Yay, Cathey!
It also got me thinking about how we as writers approach success–it looks different for all of us: traditional publishing, hybrid publishing, self-publishing, finishing a draft, or just getting some ideas on paper. But I’ve learned that we’re a stubborn bunch, too, we writers. Sometimes we can’t recognize success when it’s staring us in the face.
After years of rejections, perseverance, multiple manuscripts, a Titanic-load of learning, and an ocean-full of roiling emotions, I finally signed a publishing deal with SparkPress. My YA fantasy novel, The Violet Feathers Chronicles: Heaven will be published in the fall of 2022.
A lifetime away.
My husband, always cheering from the sidelines, couldn’t understand my muted reaction.
“This is what you’ve been working for all these years!” he exclaimed.
“Yes, exactly,” I replied. “Disappointment and me are old friends. Which means that, before 2022, something will derail this project.”
Scott scoffed, amused. “Like what?”
“The company may go bankrupt.”
“Oh, Jen…”
“Fine, then a fire will burn down the publishing house.”
“Oh, Jen…”
“Fine, then a rampaging giraffe will trample the publisher.”
(Brooke, please stay away from giraffes, okay??)
So I’m still learning how to accept success, too. 🙂
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