What Not to Do Wednesday | Cathy C. Hall Writes

Sometimes, I just can’t take another minute of bad news. Fortunately, today was not one of those days. Today I read the newspaper.

And thank goodness, grasshopper, or I would have missed a nice little story on Page one of the Gwinnett Daily Post about a young man named Deep.

Young Deep was speaking at his former high school about what looks to all like a whole bunch of academic success that he’s enjoyed. But, Deep pointed out, there were quite a few failures along the way, too. It’s just that when we see highly successful folk, we don’t think about all the heartache and failure endured to get there. It’s the old Thomas Edison and the light bulb story, I guess. We see the single light and not the days of darkness Edison struggled through.

But here’s what Deep and Edison didn’t do: they didn’t quit. So, if you want to be a successful writer, grasshopper, you’re going to have to accept the failure it takes to get there.

Some of us have to accept a lot more failure than others. But you know what old Emily Dickinson had to say about that: Success is counted sweetest by those who n’er succeed. (Wait a minute-n’er succeed? How about “Success is counted sweetest by those who work really, really hard and screw up a lot but eventually succeed”? Yeah, that sounds a lot better.)

Almost forgot! You have one more day to zip over to Finders and Keepers and post a comment for a chance to win Rachel Dillon’s beautiful picture book!

Most of the time, I’m fairly fond of myself. Not overly crazy about me, but I wouldn’t kick me out of the house, either. Except when it comes to end-of-the-month deadlines. Then I probably should kick myself. I’ll let you decide where.

All through March, grasshopper, I meant to work on a story for an anthology call out I’d seen, oh, weeks and weeks ago. I had plenty of time to take that story (and it was a good story, too) and make it shiny and bright (or dark and gory, as the anthology called for horror). But did I?

Well, I suppose there wouldn’t be much point in telling you what not to do if I’d done what I was supposed to do. So, for the past two days, I worked like a madwoman on that story. And I finished it, and submitted it, right under the deadline. Oh, I know what you’re thinking. What a clever girl she is! (Thank you). And what’s the big deal, then?

The big deal is that anthologies often fill up before the deadline. So, even if you have the most wonderful, horrific story ever, there might not be any room left for it. All because you waited around till the last minute. (That’s what I’m going to tell myself if my story doesn’t get picked. And it could actually be true, grasshopper.)

And speaking of waiting around…for those of you eagerly waiting to see who won The Cabbages and Kings Blogging Comment Contest and my autographed copy of Query Letters that Rock!, you should know that the beneficent Mr. Hall is nowhere to be found. So, I couldn’t use the patented Draw from the Colander technique. I thought I might use the Hound Picks technique, like in The Penderwick’s books. But Sally the Dog is apparently not as gifted as Hound and refused to pick a name. I eventually managed to think up a random and unbiased picking method, but it wasn’t easy. It kinda taxed my brain so much, I don’t know if I’ll get to any writing today. I can always get my writing done tomorrow.