In 2010, when I got laid off from a job I'd been working at for about four years, I was really depressed. You don't need me to tell you how bad the economy is and how invaluable a job is if you want to keep eating and paying the bills. I applied for all kinds of jobs. Jobs I had no business applying for. Not like I was trying to get a CEO job or anything, just the types that didn't fit me. I was a data entry clerk for years. It's my calling, truly.I asked God to put my feet on the right path. If He couldn't get me on the right path right away, could He please get me on the path leading to the right path? And failing that, the path next to the path that's going to take me to the right path? You get the picture.
I was laid off from May to September and then I found a job I love (by love, I mean I've worked in way worse places and learned that data entry is my thang, please, please, please don't ever make me have to work retail again, please, please, please).
It took some time and a whole lot of patience, but I got where I am today in a comfortable work environment with retirement and all the books I can read. I'm a catalog technician, by the way, which is a fancy way of saying I input books into the library computer system.
As a writer, I've been complimented and criticized (both pleasantly and unpleasantly). I've written, queried, revised and submitted. I've doubted my plots, doubted my characters, doubted my meager skills, doubted that my one and only talent is writing. I've been amazed that I wrote something as unique and masterful as a single sentence and I've deleted entire chapters that I struggled over with painstaking care.
Earlier this year, when I started edits and revisions on The Treasure Hunter's Lady, I said that this is the year I would be published. And if not this year, then next year. If not next year, then the year after that. Now, I'm relatively young in my writing career, so if I kept saying next year, next year, next year, I might not be too far off.
But with every rejection and every query, submission or contest, every revision and edit, I get one step closer to my destination. One of these days I'm going to step onto that path and instead of being lost in the woods, I'll find myself looking past the trees, on the other side of the mountain.
I'm on a path, but there are others on this path too and plenty of footprints to follow. I'm on this path, but I'm not alone.
3 comments:
Oh man do I know the feeling. But remember God never promised it would be easy, just that he would get us there. Unfortunately it will be on his time and not ours. One thing I always keep in mind is that anything worth doing isn't going to be easy. But just think of how rewarding it will be when you get there. And you have a job that most writers dream of having. Hugs!
I'm on the path with you. When I started writing a year ago, I didn't care what anyone thought. I knew my work need work. Writing came easy. Having learned so so much, I know feel like I have a foot-hold on what I need to know to perfect my craft and I find criticism and rejection tougher to take. But it reminds me of the accounting in the Bible when Jesus asks his diciples if they wished to leave him after a throng rejected him. And Simon Peter says basically "And go where? Who else has the words of life?"
If I don't write, what else would I do? I'm not a vain person. There are many things I can do but only a few I do well. Writing is the best of those things. So I'll keep walking with you.
(another long comment for you-LOL)
Maybe writing careers are a lot like writing styles. You can pants it, or plot it out. And even when you plot, like I do, it doesn't mean we stay the course.
But either way, pants or plot, I think our endings are the same. Publication!
Great post, Allison.
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