Facebook reminded me of this from a year ago-I forget that this happened. It can be so easy to get mired down in your missteps and failures you can’t see the successes. Some of the best advice I was given by a different *very successful* writer was to celebrate every victory *no matter how small*. I don’t always remember to do this and I should. Don’t get me wrong: don’t stop being critical of yourself because otherwise you won’t get better. But try not to let it become such a force in your life that you also never realize when you’ve gotten better or worse yet-it paralyzes you. This is something I am definitely working on. As well as using the critic voice and instinct and learning to trust it. For example in my case, I am currently in the process of redoing the first chapter of my first book because it is arduous(it is being rewritten for submission to different publishers) and when I read it again the first time(I might add I had already rewritten it 2 other times and thought I was done with it this time) I couldn’t figure out how to change it but my gut was telling me it wasn’t right. I finally set it aside convinced I couldn’t “kill my darlings” as the saying goes and really you don’t have to kill them. BUT you sure as hell better be ready to edit and rewrite them over and over. I recently had another example of my seeing something as a failure when actually it wasn’t: in recent conversation about my currently printed novels and being told they did well. I didn’t see it that way and said, “but none of them made it into the top 10.” It was then pointed out to me that everything I have put out thus far has made it into the top 100 and was followed with, “do you have any idea how many books there are in the world? On Amazon?” I didn’t and then I was informed somewhere around 2-3 million. Most with very large publishing houses behind them. It was nice to hear that but of course, it wasn’t enough. It’s called a creative process for a reason and until you get into the deep shit of it you don’t really get it. You are never going to pull the perfect book(album, painting, sculpture, etc…) from your ass the first time and if you do, then what? Then nothing. You cease to exist.
Celebrate the successes, no matter how small. There’s plenty of failures to stew in for later.
And if you are so inclined you can get my ebook here.