Aug/Sept.  2004
Subscribers: 530

For those of you who view your writing career as a hobby, or see the post-published life as one consisting of lolling about eating chocolates while dictating demands to your publisher-supplied publicist, don't read on.  This is not for the faint-of-heart.  However, for those of you who are striving every day to reach your goals and have come to a bump in the road that seems like Mt. Everest, please do continue reading.  There is a light at the end of the tunnel (and along the way) and I can prove it.  I've been there—and survived.

I had a book published each year for four years.  Sure, that's an accomplishment in anybody's book.  I was at least climbing the ladder of success, although my paltry print-runs and publisher non-support kept me firmly planted on the bottom rung.  I felt as if I were going to the prom.  Sure, my date was the ugly boy with pimples, but at least I was going!

And then even my foothold on that bottom rung was shaken loose and I crashed to the floor.  My publisher dropped me, stripping me of confidence and pride.  I couldn't sell a book for 2 ½ years.  Now, even the ugly boy didn't want to take me to the prom.  I was humiliated, devastated and heartbroken.  My critique partners, Wendy Wax and Jenni Grizzle (God bless them!) and many of my GRW friends supported me when and how I needed it.  They would point out how I should be proud—after all, I'd sold four books, right?  At the time, all I could do was point the words from Tom Petty's song, Even the Losers Get Lucky Sometimes.   

I was inconsolable.  And I will confess now what I have never told anyone:  I shed tears each and every day of those 2 ½ years.  St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless cases, became my close companion and we'd talk every day.  I even thought seriously about making voodoo dolls of certain New York publishing personnel and holding them over hot flames.

            Then the miracle happened.  A week before Christmas of 2003, I got a phone call from my agent.  She had a really great 2-book offer from a publisher that I used to only be able to dream about writing for.  I think my shriek of ecstasy shattered my agent's ear drums and I'll have to use part of my advance for a hearing aid for her, but that's okay.  I have a contract.  And I say that in the same revered tones as a person would say, "I'm pregnant," or "chocolate is calorie-free."

So, my advice for all of you writers who have hit a bump?  Have faith.  Have faith in a higher authority that things are working out the way they should.  Have faith in your abilities as a writer.  Then go do.  Keep writing.  You can't sell that next book if it's not written.  Read books out of your genre.  Take a writing class to hone your skills.  Help others.  It takes the focus off of yourself for a while and makes you feel better.  Hang out with your friends and people who love you.  They are a marvelous buffer against the mean people out there. 

Then, do what I'm doing.  Confess.  It's cathartic for me, and I'm hoping that I might just inspire some people to keep going.  A friend of mine sent me an inspirational quote that I keep by my computer.  I say it out loud every day and so should you.  "When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."

I know that it's inevitable that I'll hit a rough spot in my career again.  But I've found the survival basics I'll need to get through it the next time.  Remember:  have faith.  And voodoo dolls couldn't hurt, either.