5 Things You Can Do To Beat A Writing Defeat

Keep writing the world needs your words

1. Write or Make A Voice Note — Journal or say whatever comes to mind — focus on how you feel
2. Vent to friends — Choose a good listener, who loves, supports and admires you.
3. Listen to your favorite songs and do something physical like dance, clean or exercise
4. Cook/bake your favorite comfort food — Food is medicine — sometimes you need a treat
5. Make an action plan/goal to rewrite, resubmit or pray/meditate and move on to the next project

Some Extra Tips

• When you’re in a tender place, it’s all about self-care and mindfulness.
• Make sure that you monitor the negative self-talk. Journaling your stream of consciousness will help you see where you are mentally and seek help if things are too dark (for you).
• When you vent, choose someone who has positive energy. Now is not the time for Tough Love Tammy or critical or competitive frenemies”.
• Pick music with an upbeat tempo, that makes you feel good and motivates you to move and smile
• If you’re on a diet or lifestyle change pick something that’s yummy but won’t cause too much food guilt
• It’s ok to feel hurt — rejection is hard — but it’s part of the process so pout with a purpose!
• Focus on your goal(s) and try not to take the criticism personally. You may have written a flawed/bad piece — but you aren’t a bad writer. Only you know your writing limits or perhaps you submitted it to the wrong publication
• Give yourself some time to nurse yourself back to wellness. Take a day — maybe a couple days to regroup, reassess and start writing again. Do an old fashion pros and cons list and determine if the benefits are worth the effort. If not — it might be time to move on, but it’s your journey…
• No matter what — keep moving! Don’t get stuck in quitters — quicksand. If we stop writing — our writing muscles atrophy — we have to keep pushing!

I speak from experience — that persistence pays off (maybe not monetarily — yet), but in more impactful ways with your personal writing process and journey…

Don’t get stuck in quitters — quicksand. If we stop writing — our writing muscles atrophy — we have to keep pushing!

Part Of My Writing Journey

Writing can be a hard and lonely process. However, Medium’s writing communities on Twitter and Facebook make it a little bit easier — they’re awesome! I started my writing journey when I “self-published” my first book in kindergarten about my friendship with a dinosaur. (There is only one copy on construction paper, but I’m willing to consider a reprint :). I’m kidding — but I’ve loved to write and tell stories most of my life.

Fast forward to my college years, a few major changes (pun intended) and a wonderful and hard-fought career in education and social justice — now I can understand what my college writing adviser was saying when she talked about writing and writers.

She said, “you know you’re a writer if writing is the first thing you think about and what you’d do for free — because it’s what you do naturally… [WE] write because we have to — not because we want to…”

I loved that conversation. That is one of the most memorable conversations I ever had and it literally changed my life and my career path.

She went on to tell me her writing process and described writing with such urgency and imagery that it felt like she was describing an obsessed dancer… She talked about writing moving as a sensory experience: her fingers felt the pen writing words on bits and pieces of paper or typing dialogue notes. She said her characters spoke to her in her dreams. She could see them — smell and taste things and feel there pain and the fabric of their lives… They would wake her up at night, nudging her to say their words and tell their stories…

I felt it — but back then (when I wrote fiction) I lacked the discipline, the mental capacity and quite frankly wisdom and life experiences to be a real “writer”. She convinced me I wasn’t a writer then…Now I KNOW — I am a writer and I know that writing is so much more than her definition of discipline and success (as she was and still is a highly respected and successful published author, and professor at a prestigious university).

Now I write to: share my stories — advocate, illuminate injustices and stay sane. Money wasn’t my initial motivation — sanity and finding community was and still is.

Yet, the reality is we need money to survive and too much rejection and too many defeats can cause a slow descent into what I call the writer’s blues. We pour our hearts out and speak our truth or our character’s truth. When somebody reads our work and criticizes it or simply says, “I’ll pass”, it knocks the wind out of us. I started writing on Medium in April 2019 and to this day only six people have read my first piece and while I was grateful — it was a bit of a blow to my ego and not the response I expected for my re-entry into writing (20+ years later).

I didn’t have a piece curated until August 2019 and was rejected by every publication until September 2019. I went through five months of rejection — until one publication took a chance, An Injustice. Eight months later, I’ve been published in six different publications with a growing following, but I’m still being rejected from the first two publications (which coincidentally have a noticeable lack of culturally diverse writers…but that’s another story and a passion project). But my biggest accomplishment is: the time it takes to write and edit a piece has drastically reduced by 50%.

For me, what started out as catharsis is now my craft and although it doesn’t financially sustain me, it’s emotional and mental health benefits have been greatly rewarding and no amount of money can beat that.

Money Can’t Buy You Personal Growth

I’ve made little money — but that was not my initial goal or intention. The fact that I didn’t quit, I’m seeing vast improvements in my writing and editing skills and I feel a sense of accomplishment and more connected and understood — is invaluable. So for me, what started out as catharsis is now my craft and although it doesn’t financially sustain me, it’s emotional and mental health benefits have been greatly rewarding and no amount of money can beat that. My new goal is to have my writing pay my student loans and sponsor just one mini spree at Nordstrom Rack or vacation abroad. (I have my shallow moments :)

Keep writing! The world needs our words! Somewhere a reader will be informed and a fellow writer will be inspired to keep writing or write something new!

With love GFC

Here’s my first story about my return to writing