Vying For Excellence

How bad do you want your dream? Do you want it bad enough to fear the success that follows behind it? Success comes with plenty of baggage; do you have the room in your house to store it?

I used to think once my manuscript was completed the hardest part would be getting a book publishing deal. I was wrong. For seven months I sat around with a completed 300 page manuscript ready to hand over to the editor, go find an agent then go after a book deal. What have I done? Nothing. I made up excuse after excuse. I was hiding from what was really scaring me, my fear of success.This fear came from the pit of my stomach that led me to a realization. If I get this published, people are going to read it. My friends, my family, critics, people real live people. I wouldn’t be able to say, “Oh I’m writing a book” anymore, I wrote one. What would people think? Too many curse words? Would people try to find themselves in the book then sue me? What if I have to follow up with an even better book and get stuck? What if, what if, what if I’m successful?

Fearing success is not a good problem to have. It can hold you back immensely.
What it does is hold you back from the truest part of you. Deciding to write a book is not hard, writing a book is hard. The publishing industry is not something to be fearful of, it’s an industry
to be learned and understood.

Writing page after page, thinking of scene to scene and writing something worth selling, can be a huge struggle. The hard work that comes after the completed manuscript is a piece of hard cake. You know what it takes to put yourself out there; there are steps you learn to take. This journey belongs to you. Are you strong enough for it? The rejection letters, constantly going to conferences, getting harsh feedback from editors, are you ready? Are you ready for that success? Of course you are!!!

What holds many of us from success is endless, but one of the main issues to get over is the fear of rejection. Anything you do can be rejected because there is always someone who is not going to like you or your work. That’s ok, it’s just one person and in some cases more people but not everyone!

So Random House didn’t give you the book deal of your dreams, guess what? There are several other publishing companies waiting for the first twenty pages. Maybe you end up in the self publishing industry, try your luck there. You’ve just got to keep trying. What harm can you posses if you lived your dream? Anything worth keeping is worth the struggle to get to it. “Within each of us lies the power of our consent to health and sickness, to riches and poverty, to freedom and to slavery.
It is we who control these, and not another.” -Richard Bach (Illusions) Take what is yours, especially if it leads to your success.

Till Next Time,
-Mackleen

I refuse to speak to my cell phone!!!

Picture this: A quiet, bright lit computer and a shiny keyboard waiting for your fingers to tap on them. You are ready to start writing. The second the melody from your cell phone starts singing, you have already jumped out your seat, dashed from the computer, and onto a comfortable couch. You tell the person on the other end of the phone it was OK for them to interrupt your writing time. No, it is not OK.

Distractions are the worse when you need to complete a job. Writers are never to be bored because there is a major task at hand. You need to write an hour a day or a page, whichever suites you best. Can it be done? Absolutely! Will it be hard? Definitely. What is a writer to do?

This completed work is not going to write itself. One of two things will happen. The first is everything will stay in your head. The other possibility is you writing it on loose-leaf paper or drafting it onto Microsoft Word. Ask yourself, how bad do I want it? No one is going to want it badly for you if you don’t. When the ideas stay in your head, you walk around wishing you took the time out of your busy life to write. You come across someone else’s work; you might insult it or wish you completed yours. Either way it still stays in your head. You can come up with as many excuses to justify why you haven’t written but it doesn’t equal to you wanting it badly enough. Excuses are just that, excuses. Get it done.

I think sometimes as writers we over analyze, we doubt and we are afraid of success. When we over analyze, we think too much. Take that energy that is spent being critical of yourselves and more forward. There is no need to doubt yourself, don’t you know there are plenty of others that will do it for you…for FREE! We are our worst critics but it doesn’t mean we have to fear our true talents. If you are going to succeed at anything in this world, don’t you owe it to yourself to become successful at what you love?

Don’t worry so much about who is emailing you; that email will still be there 60 minutes later. It’s OK to miss that phone call from your buddy, mobile carriers created this thing called voice mail so people can leave you a message if they miss you. Its 2008 people, missing your favorite episode doesn’t hold up in this court, get TiVo or get left behind. (You can also set your VCR’s to those who are not hip to TiVo yet:) Just give that time to yourself because at the end of the day, week, year or life, excuses will not measure up to what is left in your head. “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”- Maya Angelou

Till Next Time Writers,

-Mackleen

Pennies for Writers

There is nothing in this world we can’t do. There are extremes that are least likely to happen, for example: Becoming King or Queen -but it is possible! What about the realistic goals that we sometimes think of as hard? It is only difficult when we tell ourselves we can’t. If it’s too easy, then it can be taken away just as easily as it came. So where is the balance? The balance is in you.

Let’s focus. You know you want to write a book. No matter what genre, form or style. This may shock you so brace yourselves. You are not the only one and guess what? It has been done before because everything is a form of a copy.

When you walk into a book store, one of two things will happen. One, is you may be so overwhelmed that you start wondering about never making it to the shelves. This mode of thinking leads to foolishness, like never having that line out the door with people waiting to purchase the book you wrote. That thought process is just depressing. Then there is the other side of the penny with Abraham Lincoln’s face. You walk over to the category of your genre, push the books aside where your name will be and say out loud, “PLEASE MAKE ROOM FOR ME!” That’s the attitude.

I think it’s best to go with the side Lincoln’s face is on. “You can have anything you want - if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.” -President Abraham Lincoln. Think about this when you question the heart’s desire. What is your purpose? You never know who you will touch when you reach down inside yourselves. Those words in your head need to be on that paper.

Till Next time Writers,
-MACKLEEN