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your friends and family show up and out of those, only six buy your book.

Yes, this is what happened to me at my first book signing ever. Granted, it was a poetry reading and signing, and my second book signing went a lot smoother, but still, there's nothing quite so demoralizing than to sit there for two hours with a fake smile plastered on your face and nothing to do, your books stacked neatly around you.

Was It Worth It?

Hell yeah!

In fact, it was so worth it that I began the process all over again with another novel, and then another. Right now, I have three completed manuscripts out for queries and submissions and seven more manuscripts in various stages of completion, and a concept that one publisher has said they want first crack at when it's finished.

Call me a glutton for punishment, but this torturous process of writing, submitting, waiting, changing, editing, groveling, and waiting some more, rejection, approval, acceptance, and finally PUBLISHED will be a process I repeat time and time again.

I live for the thrill, the rejection, the pain, the sleepless nights, the characters that haunt my dreams and follow me around, taunting me in my head.

I am a writer! It's not what I do; it is who I am.

But is it glamorous?

Well, perhaps it can be, but if you were to see me at three in the morning after two days with little sleep, hair piled on top of my head, a cup of cold coffee sitting on my desk, the pizza crust and box on the floor beside me, the cigarette burning untouched in the ashtray while I stare at the computer screen with wide, glazed eyes, looking like a mad woman - well, you wouldn't find it quite so glamorous then.

There is a myth running around that you have to have talent and skill to be a writer. I disagree with this. Skill can be learned, and while talent makes writing easier, it isn't necessary for someone who is dedicated and determined to write a novel.

However, I do believe there is one element every successful writer shares, one common thread you must have in order to be a successful writer, and if you don't have it, you will never succeed as a writer, no matter how good your writing is:

In order to be a writer, you must be insane, certifiably, completely insane.

Without that element, you may write, but only insanity causes a person to keep submitting over and over after rejection, after rejection, after rejection. Any sane person would give up and move on to other things, but only a true writer will continue torturing themselves in the face of all opposition. Only a writer, when ego is destroyed, pride is non existent, and hope is all but lost, continues subjecting themselves to the harsh criticism of the literary industry.

If you are a writer, and not just someone who writes, keep this in mind:

Jack Canfield, the co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, was quoted in an interview with by Charles Creekmoore as saying, "We were rejected by at least 220 publishers before Health Communications accepted Chicken Soup for the Soul. Most people don't know that this book, which is now a kind of icon in publishing, was rejected by every major publisher in New York. The obvious lesson is perseverance. Don't give up if you really feel your dream and have a passion for it. That book was a calling. I was driven. It was truly a divine obsession." (retrieved January 22, 2007 from: http://umassmag.com/2006/Fall0 6/Features/Soul_Man.html)

Can you imagine what would have happened, after 100 rejections, after 200 rejections or more, if Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen had said, "Maybe we aren't that good after all."

Never give up, never surrender, and keep writing!

Learn more about this author, Michelle L Devon.
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