Be an Encourager

“A word of encouragement after failure is worth more than an hour of praise after success” – Anonymous

 

I’d been writing for five years and had four completed manuscripts yet had not sold a single word of fiction.  The rejections came so fast I swear they hit me in the back of the head on the way home from the post office.  I wondered if I’d ever be a good enough writer to sell a book.  After the sale of an article for which I’d received $350 I was able to attend my first writers’ conference.  Because of the conference, I had the opportunity to meet with an editor who had read the first fifty pages of my manuscript.  I loved this story and felt it had all the elements of a wonderful romance.  If this book didn’t sell I didn’t know that anything I wrote would.

To say the editor didn’t like my book is an understatement.  In fact she said the best thing I could do with it was throw it in the garbage.

Devastated, I decided that I should give up trying to sell adult fiction and write children’s books instead.  I attended a workshop for children’s books and the author said something that I’ll never forget.  “Your book has a home.  Your job is to find it.”  That little bit of encouragement is all I needed.  I grabbed hold of it with both hands and clung to it as I submitted the very manuscript that had been so brutally rejected.  That book, Heart Song became my first sale.  Heart Song found a home with Simon & Schuster.  That small encouragement meant everything.  I believe if I had given up, and surrendered to defeat as a writer I would have lost a piece of my soul.

“Be an encourager.  Scatter sunshine.  Who knows whose life you might touch with something as simple as a kind word.” – Debbie Macomber