Holding Out for Elvis

I needed an injection of happy this morning.

Not because LIFE is bad. Life is great! Aaron has a job, we're house hunting, it's raspberry and cherry season, the pool water is warm.

It's just my writing life that's not so great. It's just not moving anywhere. And I can feel discouragement creeping in.

An honest post by Sarah Davies of Greenhouse Literary didn't help. She wrote about how she has queries pouring into her inbox 24-hours a day. Thousands upon thousands of queries. And I wonder, how can I compete with all that? Why is everybody and their mother suddenly deciding to become a writer?

But this morning in my Google reader I happened upon a post by Rachelle Gardner, another literary agent. Her post reminded me that I have a lot of books in me, and that if I persevere there's hope.

Anyone can sit down and write one novel. It's the people that sit down and churn out a dozen, two dozen novels, who work on honing their craft and getting better and better that will be the authors of tomorrow.

I don't want to be a one-hit wonder, do I? I don't want to be Mr. Big.

I want to be Elvis (without the hip gyrations).

If my goal is just to get one novel published, yeah, I might as well give up. But I have years and years of writing left (Lord willing) and hundreds of books to write. And who knows which of those books will finally resonate with an agent and a publishing company ... not to mention readers?

If I give up, none of them will. There will only be a silent void. And words dancing forever in my head.