Make Submitting Work Your Superpower

Over at the latest Glimmer Train bulletin, writer David James Poissant discusses a topic very near and dear to my heart:

Grit. Or maybe you call it persistence. He calls it relentlessness and tenacity.

It goes by a lot of names, but basically it means a few rejections aren’t going to stop you. Or just because you didn’t get your novel published at age 30, you decide you’re all washed up.

Poissant writes:

Perhaps, for some writers, publications and acclaim come easy, but I’m not one of those writers, nor do I know any. No magazine or editor has ever come to my door and knocked and asked if I had a story or novel sitting around that needed publishing. I say this, and you nod. But, you’d be surprised by how often students or beginning writers complain about not being published or about the difficulty of placing work before confessing that they don’t really send their work out, or that they’ll send a story to three or four literary magazines before giving up on it.

In my experience, it’s not the ones with talent who make it. It’s the ones who keep at it, even when things are going horribly wrong.

Get more inspiration over at Glimmer Train’s latest bulletin:

The Apprentice by Lee Montgomery
Using The Writer’s Notebook: A Practical Guide by Lisa Catherine Harper

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