So, most of you know that I’ve made a commitment to work on my novel every single day for 30 days. Well, I’m about half-way through and it’s harder than I thought!
The first week and a half, I cranked out about 40 new pages and several new chapters! I was shocked to have made such progress. As I said when I first made this commitment, I have never really given this dream a shot. Yes, I’m in school for it and am writing a novel, but I was always holding a part of myself back from it and I could feel it. I’m done with that. I’m giving it a chance. Hence, the new commitment.
But, this week has been harder. For starters, I got my final submission for this term back from my professor. I submitted some of my newly written stuff and he hated it. Some of his concerns are definitely legitimate, some I think may be more a matter of taste than mechanics, but those are always good opinions to get too.
I’m down to my last term in this Masters program and it still hurts to get feedback like that. I finally poured myself out on the page, made unbelievable progress and got negative feedback. So, needless to say, that halted me a little this week. I’ve spent a lot of my writing time each day staring at the computer or reading and revising a previous section, trying to decide how to move forward.
But, through this experience, I have learned two things:
1) I am not a perfect writer (nor will I ever become one).
2) There will always be negative feedback to anything I write. I can let it get me down or I can push through, learn from it, and carry on.
Yes, these are things I’ve technically known for a while. But, I must admit, with this new found purpose and passion for writing, I thought, if even subconsciously, that fully giving myself over to this was going to get great feedback. Nope. Sometimes yes, but not always.
I fully realized #2 today. I’ve got to move on, learn what I can from any feedback, and KEEP WRITING. There’s the key. Don’t give up.
As soon as I made this realization, I saw this on a blog:
Yep, I get it. Thanks for the reminder.
