Writers at a Crossroads

 

When you encounter bumps in the road on your writing journey, what do you do? The road sign pictured here today gives you two choices. It should be simple to choose one, but maybe it's more complicated for some writers. 

These two signs--hope and despair--each offer something. Let's start with despair. If you choose to go down the road of despair, you're asking for more problems than you already have. If you're wallowing in doubts or fears or self-pity, this road will only enhance each of those situations. You'll get mired down in the muck that road offers, and you could sink lower and lower as time goes on. It's easier to get into this situation than we might think. One rejection after another is bound to make us have some of these feelings. A story that meets a dead-end is frustrating. When you read what you've written and know in your heart that it is nothing but drivel, down, down, down you go. No matter how many good things we write, we've all written a bit of drivel now and then. The point is to not let it drag you down.

What about that other choice? Hope. The same writers who meet those bumps in the road can choose hope over despair. If they can put the problems behind them and look ahead to better days, they'll go down the Hope road. If they can deal with the rejections and other writing problems with an attitude of learning from them and/or fixing them, Hope is the road they will take. Will there be bumps on that road, too? Of course there will. That's part of the writing life. It's how we handle those bumps that becomes important. Does the writer who journeys down the road of Hope ever feel despair? I'm sure they do, but rather than let it get them down, they move on.

If you stand at the crossroads of Despair and Hope, consider what each one offers you. Consider which is the one that will head you to more success on your writing journey. Choose despair and you can sit and brood on that muddy road. Choose Hope and you may have a great deal of hard work ahead, but the benefit is more than worth it.