How Many Risks Are You Willing To Take?

I was pointed to this article via Debbie Ohi (@inkygirl on Twitter) written by the always brilliant Ms. Jane Friedman. It was full of helpful questions and thoughtful observations about what it takes to become a successful writer. And it's not always about talent. It is a lot about how how many risks you take and how you respond to failure.

There is one line that really caught my attention. Ms. Friedman says

"It’s the old cliché: Nothing risked, nothing gained. Playing it safe as a writer will lead to mediocre writing at best. If you’re not failing, you’re not shooting high enough."

Which made me think about the kind of person I am and whether I have enough courage to take the risks I need to challenge myself - both as a person and as a writer. I'm a cautious person by nature. I think things through and weigh the pros and cons of every decision. I'm a slow and steady wins the race kind of gal who is comfortable with a certain level of routine and a need to plan ahead so there are few to little surprises in store (did I mention I hate surprise birthday parties, too?) Makes me sound pretty dull and boring, no? Yeah, that's what I think too. But there is one thing about me that balances that cautionary nature out: once I make a decision, there is no looking back and re-assessing or regretting that decision. It is what it is and I will make the best of it and learn and grow from that decision.

Lately, I've been feeling the need to challenge myself more - and not only in writing but with other areas of life. I have felt that lack of challenge creating a restlessness within me. Now, with so many changes happening on the home front I am also looking to challenge myself on the writing front. How that will turn out, I don't know. But I do know that if I don't risk some things nothing will change and human beings have survived and dominated because they have adapted best to change.

Change, risk, failing, getting up again, trying something new, challenging the status quo, facing your fears, leaping into the great unknown - however you wish to describe it - is necessary and vital to keep you from becoming complacent and bored. And is that how you really want to feel on a daily basis? Not me. So, say it with me folks, a little risk is a good thing. If I fail it meant I at least tried.

Just Keep Pushing

No, I'm not advocating rude subway or bus riding behaviour. I'm talking about pushing through when you don't feel like any progress is being made. This happens to me in so many aspects of my life I feel like I could just write blog posts about only this topic. Sometimes it feels like all I'm doing is pushing but I'm not getting through. Like I'm holding a wall that feels like it's about to topple on me if I don't keep the pressure up against it. And that's exactly the feeling I have when I'm working through the middle of the book which I'm doing right now. And that's exactly the feeling I have when I'm dealing with family/life commitments that I can't possibly attend/deal with because there is a whole section of wall that is about to topple first so I have to let the other side crumble.

The last few weeks and the the few weeks coming up I have/had to:
- miss my mom's birthday
- miss my Uncle's surprise 65th birthday party
- delay getting my daughter's skating program started
- delay cleaning out the old house
- manage Thanksgiving weekend around two hockey games which means we might have our dinner on Saturday night so I can drive four hours on Sunday night (after the hockey game) to surprise my mom with a quick overnight visit from her grandkids, drive back on Monday afternoon, drop off my daughter at her university on the way and get back home by Monday night
- probably miss my husband's annual early extended family Christmas get together on the first weekend in December (another hockey tournament)
- slow my writing down to a painful crawl but still try and maintain some forward motion with a page or two written while waiting for the Boy to finish Tae Kwon Do practices

Yup, the wall is certainly crumbling and cracking but am I about to stop pushing and let the whole thing fall? No. I may not be entirely successful in keeping the wall straight and unbroken but, darn it, I am not going to stop pushing against it because I know if I do that I'll be a quitter and if there is anything writing has taught me is that you can't be a quitter. Not if you hope to succeed in this business. Not if you hope to suceed in completing a novel. Not if you hope to succeed in growing and expanding your own strength of character. Yes, it is hard. Yes, not everything will be perfect. But the beauty is not in perfection - the beauty is in the effort and in the holding on in face of seemingly unsupportable odds.

So for all of us holding on to those walls (or boulders) keep your strength, don't give up, don't give in. The effort will be worth it (and, if all else fails, at least your arms will get really toned).

Knowing vs. Wondering

Knowing is better than wondering, waking is better than sleeping, and even the biggest failure, even the worst, beat the hell out of never trying.
Dr. Merideth Grey, Grey's Anatomy

I love this quote. It encapsulates everything I'm trying to embrace in this crazy publishing journey I'm on. Yeah, half the time I'm wondering what will happen in a week, a month, a year from now. I've gotten so used to trying to anticipate the future that I rarely live in the moment any longer. I want to know what will happen now, please. I hate waiting. I like certainty. I can handle bad news - just tell me the bad news. I hate guessing.

Will the book be read by anybody? Will it be liked? Will I sell another one? Will I ever finish the one I'm working on now? Why do I put myself through this angst? The uncertainty - the not knowing - just about makes me crazy.

But, like a few wise commenters said on my previous post, if I knew all the answers beforehand would I have still taken the journey? Maybe not. And if not, then all I'd be left with was a lifetime of wondering "What if ...?"

Talk about driving yourself crazy.

I also believe that 'waking is better than sleeping'. I know that even with all the dreaded uncertainty that is part of your everyday life, that uncertainty can also be exciting, stimulating, and yes, terrifying, but you are living it. Not watching it from the sidelines. Not sleeping your life away. Not dreaming about it. Living it. Because, like the last line of that quote says so eloquently, the regret you face out of never trying something you really want - really crave - trumps all the angst and fear that living with uncertainty brings.

So, when all is said and done, I'd rather be wide awake living with the only knowledge I can ever have: that, at the very least, I tried.

How about you?

On the Terrifying Cusp of Change

It's March 1st. I can't quite believe it. Spring is around the corner. I can feel the changes coming in the air (cue Phil Collins music here). ILLEGALLY BLONDE releases in T-minus 30 days. On March 25th I'll be making my first appearance on a writer's panel at a local university to discuss how immigration affected my writing. I'm starting to plan my book launch (in April) but I'm also dealing with things like ordering bookmarks, putting together information packages about my book and me, the author. Weirdness times ten. Yes, it will be a month of huge firsts and highly stressful yet exciting changes in my life. I can't quite believe these things are happening. Even my horoscope is hinting at these events. Check this out:

The month ends with big news about your career. The full moon on March 29 will illuminate your standing in your industry, your company, or concerning a job you have interviewed for. You will get answers now, and if you get a new job (very possible), the position you will move into is likely to be one that comes with quite a bit of responsibility. It will bring you lucrative ways to make money, too, and it seems to include a performance-based commission or bonus. Your new job won't be an easy one - you will have to adjust and learn as you go - but this new job will come with power and authority. That's the kind of job that is right up your ally, so snap it up.

Yes. Adjust and learn as you go. That's really the crux of this whole writing journey, isn't it?

There should be a bloody manual that all new writers get before they put pen to paper/fingers to keyboard for the first time that talks about the terrifying emotional journey you take as a writer. Sure, there is a wealth of knowledge, information, support and advice in the writing community. You can research how to write query letters, how to structure novels, how to market, how to network etc. etc. etc. but until you go through it, until you experience the jaw-dropping amount of information you have to accumulate, until you experience the joy and agony of the query and manuscript submission process, until you experience the difficulty in putting yourself out there when you may be introverted or overwhelmed by the daunting impossibility of having your book be noticed in the sea of books being released, until you realize it's not just the writing of the story anymore, you could literally throw that pen or keyboard away and say "Forget it. It's too much. It's just too much."

And yet.

Adjust and learn as you go.

Every new thing learned requires some kind of adjustment. And in order to grow we need to learn. So, yes, this is a terrifying time for me - and probably for a lot of writers proceeding on the next step of the publishing journey, whatever that may be. Submitting to an agent can be terrifying. But once you do it a few times it's not so bad. Revising a manuscript can seem impossibly daunting. And it is. But once you do it you are that much more likely to be better at it the next time. Never marketed yourself before? Never blogged, never tweeted, never walked up to strangers at conferences and introduced yourself, never sat on a writers panel? Do it once and it is scary, do it a few times and it does get easier. At least I hope so! :)

Adjust and learn as you go. Yes. I think that's going to be my mantra for the next month. Maybe the next few years.

Failure Breeds Success: So says Michael Jordan

I've never been much of an athlete. Anything that requires an inordinate amount of physical sweat just turns me off. However, I am always impressed when I read about the mental will power that goes into shaping a star athlete. The ones that are the stars, the winners. How do they think? What is it about their attitude that makes a difference in their performance? Sure, you have to have some God-given talent and ability - but that can't be enough to push you into a superstar range.

My son is a hockey player. He's got a lot of inate skill and ability. He's a thing of beauty when he skates. But, as his parents, my husband and I need to tell him just because something comes easy to you doesn't mean you don't have to continue to work hard for it. Especially when you are not doing so well - that's when the true grit of a star athlete comes through - the never giving up bit. And, of course, anything we say as parents is immediately suspect to him. What do we know about being athletes? I don't even skate, for pity's sake!

So my husband did a little digging and found an amazing quote from one of the most superstar of all superstar athletes: Mr. Michael Jordan. Here's the quote and a segment from the article on him that sums it all up quite nicely :

"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

But Michael admits he lost hundreds of games. He missed thousands of shots in his career. He failed multiple times.

And yet he says, this is exactly why he is a success.

Michael Jordan wasn't born a basketball star. He spent hours and hours practicing.

It took time.

It took great coaching.
And it took persistence.

And there you have it, writers. Persistence. Practice. Doing something again even when you failed at it before. Superstar athletes know this. They know they will fail. And they know that learning from failure is the key thing that will help you, eventually, succeed.

We're going to print this Michael Jordan lesson out for our son so he can tack it on his wall. But you know what? I think I'm going to print one out for myself too. We all need to remember the lesson: Failure breeds success. Don't be afraid of it. Learn from it.

The Juggling Act

I have a special affinity and sympathy for the struggles of working moms who also want to write. It is my sisterhood, after all. I also have an understanding of the working writer mom dealing with a guilt complex - a very special sisterhood indeed. Many of my friends and some of my fellow writers who are just beginning this journey ask me, "How do you do it? When do you get the time to write? How do you manage?" You're not going to like my answer.

I don't think I manage very well at all.

I don't have the answer on how to find the time to be a mom, writer, wife, career person, friend, family member and every other hat you might be wearing. If I did I'd write a book about it and make a bazillion dollars. I don't even have a plan or a way to organize all those balls we're juggling. All I do is live with the guilt that I'm not keeping the balls in the air. Inevitably, something has to drop.

For example, this weekend was Canadian Thanksgiving. A whole 3 days at home. Surely, I could get to do all the things that have piled up over the last few weeks. Surely, I could finally finish the revision that I've given myself to the end of this month to complete. Surely, I could spend more quality time with hubby, the kids and my visiting family. Well, in some ways I did do all of that - but not everything was accomplished.

I could have spent more time with family, I could have written more, I could have done more laundry. But at least I did a little bit of each. And maybe that's my answer. It's not all or nothing, you see. It can't be. That way lies madness. I mean, I can't juggle at all so why do I think that if I put more than two or three things in the air I'll be a success at it? I won't. But I know I can juggle those two or three. So on any given day I pick those two or three and deal with them. The next day it might be two different things. By the end of the week I'll have juggled a grand total of fifteen to twenty things but on different days. Totally doable and quite impressive when you add them up.

So, bottom line, don't try and be a master juggler every single day of your life. All you'll end up with is a bunch of balls rolling around at your feet ready to make you trip and fall. So take it easy, one day at a time, one or two balls at a time and, most importantly, one guilt trip at a time.

It Takes a Village to Build Self-Confidence

Writers know that self-confidence is a fragile thing. We're always one bad day of writing, one vague criticism, or one reject from an editor or agent away from declaring ourselves not worthy enough, not tough enough, or not good enough to handle this business. So where do we get the courage, the fortitude, the self-confidence to keep going in the face of all this? I always thought that self-confidence was something that was either inside you or not. I always thought that a belief in yourself meant that you didn't need others to believe in you. But this week I've seen someone very close to me struggle with their self-confidence, with their belief in their capabilities because of judgements from someone else. And I've come to realize that even if we might believe in ourselves sometimes we need to hear others say that they believe in you even when we might have stopped believing in ourselves. Especially when we've stopped believing in ourselves.

Friends and family are the most critical people in building - or re-building - the crumbling foundation of self-confidence. For writers, their critique partners, or their agents or editors are also key. If these people don't believe in you and tell you that you are good enough that your work is worthy, then you have to do the work of building your fragile self-esteem all by yourself. And some people can do that. Some people are very, very strong that way. Others need help. And there's something to be learned - for me at least - about how to support people when they're shaky. I've discovered that sometimes you need to back away from the struggle and re-trench. Sometimes you need to stop what you're doing for awhile altogether. And when someone you care about feels like quitting what is your job as a family member or friend or critique partner to do? Should you automatically say don't quit? Never give up? Nobody likes quitting after all but is it really quitting or taking another path? Who are we to say this is the way to go forward? No one has the right answers to these very personal questions.

All I know is that a person I care about is suffering and if that means they need to stop, re-group and try again later then that means I will support them. They are not quitters to me. They just need to find what the best building material is for their self-confidence and, once they figure that out, I'll be there helping to re-build that foundation.

30 Motivational Quotes for 30 Motivated Days of Writing

I'm about to dive into a new wip that I left idling a few months ago. The manuscript I just recently completed is now, temporarily, on the shelf. And that's as it should be - I knew there was something just not quite ... quite about it. Not quite right, not quite there, not quite something. My agent confirmed it when I sent her both partials and she tagged the one I'd recently started tinkering with again. So now I've got to stop the idling and rev 'er up. So, to get my motor going (okay, I'll stop with the car analogies now) I decided to pull out 30 of my favourite motivational quotes that will help me to write something new on the wip every day for the next 30 days. I'll share them here and hope they provide something to anyone who needs a little push to keep writing, keep following their dream, and keep their faith that one day they'll see their book published.

Without further ado, my 30 Quotes for 30 days of Writing:

Day One
"Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.”
Mark Victor Hansen

Day Two
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
Winston Churchill

Day Three
"Never, never, never, never give up.”
Winston Churchill

Day Four
"Only as high as I reach can I grow, only as far as I seek can I go, only as deep as I look can I see, only as much as I dream can I be.”
Karen Ravn

Day Five
“Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.”
Pamela Vaull Starr

Day Six
"Little by little one walks far”
Peruvian Proverb

Day Seven
“To move ahead you need to believe in yourself...have conviction in your beliefs and the confidence to execute those beliefs.”
Adlin Sinclair

Day Eight
"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
Eleanor Roosevelt

Day Nine
"It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, "Always do what you are afraid to do."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Day Ten
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore,is not an act but a habit."
Aristotle

Day Eleven
"The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person's determination."
Tommy Lasorda

Day Twelve
"If you doubt you can accomplish something, then you can't accomplish it. You have to have confidence in your ability, and then be tough enough to follow through."
Rosalyn Carter

Day Thirteen
"If you can DREAM it, you can DO it."
Walt Disney

Day Fourteen
"I have heard it said that the first ingredient of success - the earliest spark in the dreaming youth - is this; dream a great dream."
John A. Appleman

Day Fifteen
"You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however."
Richard Bach

Day Sixteen
"If you don't have a dream, how are you going to make a dream come true?"
Oscar Hammerstein

Day Seventeen
"A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown."
K Denis Waitley

Day Eighteen
"Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game, one foot from a winning touchdown."
H. Ross Perot

Day Nineteen
"If you want to get somewhere you have to know where you want to go and how to get there. Then never, never, never give up."
Norman Vincent Peale

Day Twenty
"How long should you try? Until."
Jim Rohn

Day Twenty-one
"Perseverance is failing nineteen times and succeeding the twentieth."
Julie Andrews

Day Twenty-two
"When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing, then we truly live life."
Greg Anderson

Day Twenty-three
"Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find his right road."
Dag Hammarskjold

Day Twenty-four
"You must have long term goals to keep you from being frustrated by short term failures."
Charles C. Noble

Day Twenty-five
"You can't hit a home run unless you step up to the plate. You can't catch a fish unless you put your line in the water. You can't reach your goals if you don't try."
Kathy Seligman

Day Twenty-six
"Crystallize your goals. Make a plan for achieving them and set yourself a deadline. Then, with supreme confidence, determination and disregard for obstacles and other people's criticisms, carry out your plan."
Paul Meyer

Day Twenty-seven
"You have to set goals that are almost out of reach. If you set a goal that is attainable without much work or thought, you are stuck with something below your true talent and potential."
Steve Garvey

Day Twenty-eight
"The tragedy of life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goals to reach."
Benjamin Mays

Day Twenty-nine
"Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go."
William Feather

Day Thirty
"Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong."
Ella Fitzgerald

So I'm late to the party but at least I showed up...

Okay, in real life I hate being late. HATE it. I even have my watch set for five minutes ahead of the real time so I've always got a cushion in my life. So then why has it taken me so long to join the blogosphere - especially since I'm a writer? Because I'm one of those introvert extrovert people. Part of me loves yakking and meeting people but there's always a part of me that shys away from putting myself 'out there' too. Hence the totally appropriate title of my blog. I have to force myself out of the wordwork.

Part of me knows it's necessary - especially if I want to be a published writer one day. Out there is where you have to be. But that's also why I love being a writer. You can hide behind the words and worlds that you create. Those are the stories that you've invented and no one can really be sure how much is you and how much is that wacky imagination taking over. But no one can really know you. Well, I'm always telling my kids to get out there and try things - don't shy away. How will you ever know if you like something unless you try it? And that's what I told myself six years ago:

How will I ever know if I can get a book published unless I try to do it?

And I'm still trying. I've written some novels I'm really proud of. I have an agent who's trying to sell a couple of them now. I've worked hard, am still working hard, to learn and grow and write better. And I will always keep trying because, honestly, that's the only thing I can do.

So, I'm here. I'm trying the blogger thing. I'm not sure if I'll have much to say and if I do, whether I'll say it well enough. But I'm trying. That's all a human being can do...

Nice to be here.