Yes, that’s what writers do. Persevere. In order to do so, however, they need regular feeding and nurturing, and that’s one of the main reasons I attended the Surrey International Writers’ Conference last weekend.
Without perseverance novels would never get finished, and they would never get published. In my earlier post I mentioned I’ve been dawdling. I love the writing part, but it’s easy to get bogged down after reworking the same words over and over again, so I move on. I do finish the first few drafts, but after an initial query and submission I tend to tuck the story on a shelf and begin something new.
My weekend at the conference was another opportunity to approach agents, editors and publishers, but of greater benefit was going to be regaining my enthusiasm…being rejuvenated.
I found that renewal in two workshops, both led by Angela Ackerman, author and writing coach at Writers Helping Writers, who provided inspiration from her just-released book on emotional wounds. The insight hit like the cliched proverbial lightbulb going on. Now I’m delving back into a story whose main characters needed a particular background that I didn’t know how to provide. Until now. It’s all in here:
I’ll update once I’ve maneuvered through this revision. I suspect this is going to be where I spend my NaNoWriMo days.
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Angela and Becca have a lot happening on their Writers Helping Writers blog. It’s well worth a visit.
