I attended a seminar on writing recently.
The presenters talked
to the brutal ‘facts’ of writing,
about the long hours needed
(in romance, four full-length books a year is minimum),
that just because you sold your last book
doesn’t mean you’ll sell your next,
and other slices of realism.
It was realistic
but it was also a real downer.
Like entrepreneurs,
writers don’t need to attend a seminar
to hear their odds of succeeding are low.
We hear it from well meaning
friends, family, neighbors, complete strangers.
If we are doing,
we face rejection day after day.
These low odds slap us in the face every day.
Yet we still do.
We write or we launch companies
or we do a thousand other impossible things.
So don’t tell us our odds of success are low.
Let us have our starry-eyed optimism,
and help us increase those odds.