For the past few blogs, we have talked about grammar: Adverbs and adjectives, similes and metaphors. Learning all of this is important if you want your writing to be crisp and professional. However, none of this counts if you don’t believe in yourself as a writer. Do you feel discouraged or defeated? Are you confused about what genre will make you a successful writer? If you don’t have confidence in yourself, all the powerful metaphors or distinctive adjectives in the world won’t work.
Why am I taking this detour?
Last week I talked to a new writer who reached out to me. She was about to give up. She had numerous rejections, and couldn’t bear the criticism she had experienced. She sent me some of her work and I was ecstatic. Her work proved to be well-written, colorful, and entertaining. Her talent blew me away. Yet she thought she should give up writing.
It brought me back to when I started writing. At 52 and just retired as a nurse, I tried writing short articles for magazines and was astonished when two pieces were accepted. However, that was just the start of many years of rejection.
Why ignore rejection?
After that small start, I started writing novels and found out that a publisher for Catholic novels didn’t really exist. In fact, during a publisher’s round table at a writer’s conference, I finally got the courage to stand up and ask a publisher about my Catholic novels. Instead of support, I was told that I couldn’t be a very good writer and told that the fact that I called my novels Catholic proved that no publisher would want to touch them. The publisher continued and told me that a real novelist made his faith “stealth” and kept it between the lines.
To say I was crushed is to put it mildly. To be fair, a person behind me yelled out that God doesn’t call us to hide our faith and putting me down for proclaiming it was totally wrong. I was too embarrassed to look around to see who said that as I sank, embarrassed, into my seat. However, I will never forget having that support when I needed it.
I let that put-down eat away at me. That night I went to my lonely hotel room and cried, asking God what He wanted from me: was this His will? I had struggled to save the money needed to rent a table at this conference. It was also a great expense to have my novels self-published. Feeling all alone and deserted, I decided that night to give up writing, telling myself that I was out of my league. Who did I think I was anyway?
And that’s the point. I didn’t know who I was.
Was I a Writer?
Having made the decision to give up writing, I dried my eyes and headed down to a quick dinner and a night of rejection. Very few people came to my table and even fewer were buying my books. Still, I had paid for this space and had one more day of the conference to go, so I decided to make the best of it. What happened next was the answer to the prayers in my room, but I didn’t recognize that at first. That evening, a robed priest with a long beard approached. He stopped at my table and picked up my second novel, Into the Way of Peace. Since I had decided at the beginning that I would give free books to priests and religious, I asked him if he wanted one. He smiled and said, “Yes, but only if you sign it.” Laughing, I asked him his name and he told me he was Father Groeschel, a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal. Off he went.
Little did I know that he would aid me in changing my resolve to quit writing. The next morning, as I was planning my packing up and driving home, there he was standing at my table. He said, “Do you know the people in this book? Are they real?”
I laughed and said that no, they weren’t real, but some of their history and traits came from people I grew up with. He asked some questions about the characters, which led me to understand that he had read the entire book in one night. I was stunned.
And then he said the words that changed my life. He said, “Keep writing!”
Are you a real writer?
So why am I telling you this story? It still took me a long time to think of myself as a ‘real’ writer. In my next post I want to share the behaviors I learned. Behaviors that taught me to think like an author. This next blog is for that talented young writer out there who is ready to quit and for anyone unsure and discouraged about their writing.
Karen Boyce
Karen Kelly Boyce lives on a farm in N.J. with her retired husband. She is a mother and grandmother. She is the author of “The Sisters of the Last Straw” series published by Tan Books. You can see her work and learn more about her on her website: www,kkboyce.com
Thanks, Karen Boyce!