Taking My Cues From the Persistent Widow

I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel a little like this guy (see left) when it comes to my novel writing.

Take my current WIP, for example. I feel so, so, so far away from my goal of making serious headway, and my schedule isn't exactly getting any less crazy (a blessing, of course, in the age of unemployment highs, but as a result of said craziness, my WIP is suffering an anemic shortage of well, words).

Whenever I get majorly discouraged, though, I think about two things: the parable of the persistent widow and my first few months of working at CCM Magazine in Nashville.

After a year and a half of odd jobs in Nashville following my college graduation (filing at a bank, working the overnight shift at Walgreen's, nannying for the lady from Hades—the kid was just fine, mind you, it's his Mom I didn't like—serving as the music guru at a Christian bookstore, doing the unpaid intern thing), I'd finally landed the gig of my dreams—working as an actual paid copywriter for CCMmagazine.com.

While I was oh-so-happy and very fulfilled with what I was doing, (I mean, nothing is more awesome than the instant-gratification of writing something and seeing it online only moments after you wrote it), I really wanted to be writing album reviews for the actual print magazine.

Now I knew I was still a newbie and ultimately had to pay my dues, but since the editor of the album reviews section was right across from my cubical, I decided to make my best pitch.

And thankfully, like the pro that he was, he was really nice about it and requested a few samples of my previously published reviews first.

"No problem, I've got tons," I reassured him, and the next day, he had exactly what he asked for—samples galore—all neatly print out and arranged by genre (yeah, I can be a bit anal retentive).

Just in case he didn't think I was serious about my future in album reviewing, I asked him what he thought of my clips a couple of times a week. As to be expected, he was much too busy to give me an answer right away, but I kept hitting him up Persistent Widow-style for a couple of months, until he finally caved.

By the way, I still remember the first CD I reviewed...The Big Surprise from The Elms. And for the record, I won't even mention how much red ink was used while editing my first review, but I didn't let that get me down either.

I guess why I'm mentioning all of this is because it's so easy to get discouraged with our writing—or rejection, a popular topic this week on Scribble Chicks.

Maybe you feel like you've gotten the shaft one too many times or lack the proper resources (i.e. the perfect agent or publisher, the luxury of oodles of time to write) to succeed. But if I've learned anything from my pal, The Persistent Widow, it's this: Anything truly worthwhile is worth pursuing again and again and again. And perhaps in the sea of "no's" or "wait 'til laters" you've received, you'll get a "yes," and it'll change your life forever.

Yep, that's exactly what reviewing that one Elms' record did for me. :) Now back to that regularly scheduled novel-writing...