Don't Give Up

Just about every writer has wanted to throw in the towel at one time or another. Whether it’s lack of ideas, piles of rejections, or lack of motivation, the temptation is always there. And whether or not a writer considers quitting, most don’t. Why is that?

Writing for many is a compulsion. It’s a drive that runs deep. For some, it starts in childhood, for others later in life. But either way, writers feel compelled to write. And anything that gets in the way of this desire causes frustration.

To avoid getting into this trap, it helps if you know some of the causes, so you don’t get into this predicament in the first place.

Some writers just can’t come up with enough ideas. Do you begin working on what you consider a super idea, only to get bogged down because the idea isn’t developing the way you thought it would? This problem usually comes about because you haven’t thought the idea through. But thinking about an idea is only part of the process. You’ve got to plan it out, too—even roughly.

But not every idea is a super one, so it pays to stockpile them. The more ideas you have, the better. Not all of them will be winners. In fact, most of them won’t be. Having other ideas on hand will enable to you to try something else if the first one doesn’t work. No writer should ever quit for lack of ideas.

Rejections, on the other hand, have put an end to many a writing career. To get published, your work must be accepted. If it’s rejected, you don’t have a chance. One writer got 28 rejections on a book idea before he realized that it may be too specific or not in line with what publishers wanted. He didn’t give up. Instead, he tried another which got accepted immediately. He jokingly said that early in his career he got enough rejection slips to wallpaper his bathroom.

A young California food writer wrote a Moroccan cookbook. No one was interested in it, so she published it herself. She ended up with a room full of several thousand books. Did she quit? No. She contacted Nieman Marcus in Texas and got them interested in selling it in their gourmet shop. That worked out fine, so she continued contacting department store chains and gourmet shops across the country. Her first venture was such a success that she went on to publish six more cookbooks.

Lack of motivation causes a lot of beginning writers to think twice about further pursuing a writing career. Wanting to write is one thing. But have a purpose is another. Whatever you write should have purpose. Do you want to inform or entertain or advise? Giving a purpose to your work will make it seem that much more important. Ask yourself why you want to write. If you say it’s just to get noticed, you’ll fail for sure.

Finally, if you’ve been writing for a while and have had some success but are now in a slump due either to a lack of ideas or a lack of markets, think about all the work you’ve put into your career so far. Don’t let it go to waste. Keep plugging away and give yourself another chance.

The Proof is in the Book

During my writing career, I have written quite a few books. Like most writers, I labored over the content and the words and phrases to bring it to light. When I finished writing my books, I sent them off to an editor at my publisher.

Recently, I took on the job of editing a cookbook for a Quaker Meeting of which I’m a member. While this seemed like an easy task at first, I soon realized that editing was much more than correcting spelling and punctuation and the occasional mistake in grammar. How difficult would it be to edit recipes? Boy, was I way off base.

Yes, there were spelling and punctuation errors to correct, but editing a book involves so much more as I soon found out.

One of the main jobs of a book editor is to make sure the content and style remains consistent throughout the book. A book is a large volume of work. When writing one, I try to keep the main idea in mind, but as I get deeper into it, I sometimes change how I express certain things which results in inconsistencies.

And so it was with this cookbook. The person who compiled the recipes is a cook, herself, so the recipes, themselves were okay, for the most part. However, different recipe donors had different ways of expressing the same procedure in similar recipes. For example, some donors used fractions while others used decimals to indicate parts of measurements. A few recipes weren’t at all clear. And while folksy and interesting to read, they left the cook wondering what to do next. So in this case, clarity became a major concern.

Another facet of editing this cookbook was focusing it to the reader. At first, it targeted only to people at our Meeting, but to make this a successful fundraising project, it had to be clear to those outside our Meeting who might purchase the book. The problem that surfaced while editing was how the descriptive anecdotes that accompanied the recipes related to the reader. Originally, the compiler had only the people at our Meeting in mind as readers. But to sell the book to a broader audience, that had to be changed so that other readers would understand the family relationships mentioned in the book.

Upon finishing this project after six or seven weeks of intensive editing, I now have a very healthy respect for my book editors. And as a writer, I plan to insure that I make their job a little easier by paying stricter attention to details when writing my books. I also learned a lot about the other side of publishing–getting the book ready for market–which I can now use to self-publish books.