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