I felt I hit my peak at age 50. Truly the top of the mountain. Wonderful things were happening in my life; love, career, health, opportunity but I could see the downward slope of my life in my future as I aged. One could call it a crisis. But I like Brene Brown’s take on it. It’s an unraveling. Now in the autumn of my life, I know my days here on this planet grow shorter but because of that I am less inclined to waste them. I want to enjoy every day, take on new challenges, breathe in new experiences, be who I want to be, not who others want me to be. Life is precious. Live it. Live it fully. Right to the end. BH
“People may call what happens at midlife “a crisis”.
But it’s not.
It’s an unraveling . . .
a time when you feel a desperate pull to live the life you want to live not the one you’re supposed to live.
The unraveling is a time when you are challenged by the universe to let go of who you think you are supposed to be
I recently received Alison Wearing’s Memoir Writing, Ink newsletter and she had this to say about rejection as a writer —
“Every year, I try to remind people that Every Writer Faces Rejection. Every. Single. Freaking. One. It’s not an anomaly, it’s not a measure of talent (or character), it’s part of the process that writers everywhere endure. So, rather than taking rejection as evidence that you are not a writer, it’s also possible to take it as evidence that you are.”
~Alison Wearing, Memoir Writing, Ink
“Louisa May Alcott was told to “Stick to your teaching.” Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ was deemed “unsalable and unpublishable.” One publisher found Ernest Hemingway’s ‘The Sun Also Rises’ “to be both tedious and offensive.”
By Mental Floss UK |Dec 1, 2023″
The list goes on. Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows; George Orwell, Animal Farm; H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds; Joseph Heller, Catch-22; Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, all received rejection letters when they first submitted their works.
Add authors Ursala K. Le Guin, Jack Kerouac, Stephen King, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Louisa May Alcott, John le Carré, Gertrude Stein and D. H. Lawrence to the list and I think you may be getting the picture.
Rejection is simply a part of life as a writer. You can’t please everybody. A thick skin helps but, whatever you do, don’t give up. In this day and age, there is always self-publication. Many authors who decided to self-publish after rejection by traditional publishers have gone on to be successful. Wildly successful. These include Margaret Atwood, Lisa Genova, EL James, E. E. Cummings, and Mark Twain. There are also many media sites out there to highlight your work and begin creating your own readers. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and blog sites are all public platforms to showcase your work. Literary magazines and newsletters are always looking for new material.
Whatever you do as a writer, DON’T GIVE UP. Keep writing, keep creating, keep dreaming.
