Perseverance! It's one of my two keywords for finding success as a writer. The other one is Patience.
Another oft-repeated phrase at this blog is "Believe in yourself."
I have a writer friend who has shown all three of these traits with one personal essay that she wrote some time ago. Like all of us, she created the first draft, edited it, revised it and then began submitting the piece. After ten unsuccessful tries, she sent it to her writing group. Maybe they could see something missing that had not come to her. They read, they critiqued--she edited and revised some more and sent it to seven more publications.
That's seventeen tries with the essay. On the seventeenth submission, a journal accepted and published her work. Ecstatic? You bet she was. And rightly so. She lives on another continent but I can almost see her smiling from here. I admire her for staying with the essay and continuing to submit until it found a home.
This true short story about a writer who practiced patience and perseverance and who believed in herself can be a good lesson for all of us who write.
Think about work that you have submitted once, twice, three times and been rejected each time. What did you do next? Did you give up? Revise and resub? Turn to a writing group or writer friend for help? Would you have submitted the same piece seventeen times?
I feel certain my friend felt depressed when rejection after rejection assailed her. Who wouldn't? She obviously did believe in herself and her essay enough to continue to submit. She was tenacious in her quest for getting the piece published.
How about digging out some of those rejected pieces that are perishing slowly in your files? Approach submitting again, after a new edit and revision, with patience and perseverance. Most of all, believe in yourself but keep learning and refining your skill as a writer.
Use the comments section to share any thoughts you have about the number of times you will submit your work.
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