For 17 months I have had to deal with everything on this list. I’m sure I’ll have to for another 17 weeks and longer. Alone, it’s been harder to do than others with support of family and friends. But coming out of the darkness into light with a first draft of my first book made me a survivor. I’m no longer afraid of what I can do nor what someone says I can’t do. I’ve done it, and I’m proud of myself. I did what others dreamed of doing. Where the road will lead me now, I don’t know, but it was worth all the pain and hard work to find it. Now, I just have to follow it.

I wrote a book. Now what?

I write a lot. I make mistakes and I correct them. I try and I fail. I’ll try again until I succeed. It’s not easy to take something and show it to the world. It’s hard. There are outside forces one must face. Someone asked me what I do about the outside forces that affect my writing, my tenacity and my emotional state.

  1. Rejection
  2. Opinions good or bad
  3. Degrading Criticism
  4. Constructive Criticism.
  5. Doubt
  6. Fear
  7. Jealousy
  8. Sabotage
  9. Help and kindness
  10. Encouragement
  11. Trolls and haters

There is so much more I could list. The bottom line is no matter what a person does there will be things that help and things that hurt. I can’t say what you should do about either, it is a personal thing on how to handle them. What I can do is tell you what I do.

Recently I had an encounter with a man at a…

View original post 1,127 more words