The biggest emotional challenge of writing? The waiting. So much of writing and the publishing process takes an immense amount of time. Months can go by with no movement, no change, and as a result, you can feel completely hopeless and out of control. What You Can Control While WaitingContinue Reading
I think the biggest emotional challenge for most writers is rejection. Writing is a competitive business. There are way more authors needing publishers than publishers needing authors. So, rejection is more the rule than the exception. But it’s still hard to take. I usually can’t write at all for aContinue Reading
Writing is such a personal and intimate thing. I always liken writing with the intent to publish to be like singing in front of a crowd. It’s a very vulnerable thing and so you can be very susceptible to the little whispers of self doubt. You really can be yourContinue Reading
My biggest emotional challenges of being a writer can change depending on where I am in the process. Overall, I would say it’s coping with depression as that has been a struggle most of my adult life. It affects so many areas, like whether I can talk myself into writingContinue Reading
I have a thick skin. Having a large family can give you that! That doesn’t mean I don’t get upset. I do. I’m crushed every time I get a rejection but…I give myself a very short grace period to be hurt, and then I do the proverbial “get up andContinue Reading
A retirement dream job, a yearning to write; a bookstore and a well-known Canadian author, all entered my life with magical serendipity. I was sixty-seven, with forty-three pages of a memoir awaiting page forty-four. I Wanted to Hold Onto the Stories I began a memoir seven months after my husband,Continue Reading
How can anyone—a bureaucrat, a librarian, a gardener, a writer—be both so undisciplined and so anal? Contradiction is, I suppose, a necessary element in writing fiction. It can lead to tension in the plot, conflict among the characters, doubts and fears in the protagonist. Probably not so helpful when theContinue Reading
As is so common with writers, there were years and years of work with barely any acknowledgment, interspersed with plenty of self-doubt. Writing is such a lonely pursuit, which is why when you finally get writers together at a conference, we are all practically panting with excitement to be aroundContinue Reading
I sincerely believe a lot of factors are involved [in emotional wellness]. Rejection hurts and nearly every author has been rejection at some point in their career. I don’t think I’ve ever really been depressed. After all, my friends call me Queen of Denial. I think I focus on theContinue Reading
Before I became a writer, I was a reader who enjoyed historical fiction more than other novels or non-fiction. In middle school, I enjoyed books written by Jean Plaidy, (one of Eleanor Burford Hibbert’s several pen names), because she depicted her characters as real people rather than names in aContinue Reading
Because I am writing to provide insights and information, I have never doubted that what I was doing had worth. That’s huge! I really do think it empowers people to know about ecology, history and how systems function. How a Writer Sees Criticism The biggest emotional challenge is right-sizing feedback.Continue Reading
[Photo caption: Author Jason Offutt and his wife Kimberly Offutt on a recent vacation at Rathbun Lake, Iowa. Yes, Iowa has lakes.] There are different levels of emotional stress that come with where a writer is in their career. Early on was rejection, until I learned that EVERY writer getsContinue Reading