Sunday, November 20, 2011

Creativity, helpful friends and happiness: For these, I'm thankful

I've been wanting to write a Thanksgiving post for a few days now, and I've had some trouble starting. Not because I have so little, but because I have so much. Now, if you had told me a few years ago I might have this problem, I likely wouldn't have believed you.

Because I was angry. And sad. I had lost my sister, my journalism career had ended, and all my pets died. It wasn't a good year, to say the least.

My creativity, my saving grace, disappeared. Just vanished. I could barely lift my head, much less craft a tantalizing sentence. Oh, I tried. But let's face it, as writers, we know when we suck.

I had a manuscript in my desk, a murder mystery that I had fully intended on sending out to literary agents. But after awhile, I forgot about it. The only thing that got me out of bed was my family. One day, my husband found my novel. "You should do something with this," he said. "After all, you wrote it."

I did, I thought. And I realized I didn't want to spend my time writing queries. So I published it myself. And people actually bought it and liked it. I was incredibly excited and gratified. I started writing some more. I read blogs about writing. I started my own. I met helpful authors, authors I really admired who wrote incredibly helpful blogs like thewritersguidetoepublishing.com and jakonrath.com

I'm not a bestselling author, not by a long shot. But I write every day. And I learn something every week. I'm creating.  I'm happy. For that, I'm very thankful.

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