Elizabeth Drake wrote about the macro-process, time, and commitment to bring out her latest book, Knight of Valor. My most critical take-aways from her post was believe in yourself, trust yourself, don’t give up on yourself, keep trying, and keep learning.
Toughest of these for me is to trust myself. I seem to get easily shaken. Elizabeth wrote, “Part of the reason this book had so many revisions was I took a lot of advice I shouldn’t have. More benign advice was to write in any order than piece those scenes together. Yeaaaah, no. Doesn’t work for me, and it created a lot more work in the revision process.” I don’t take much advice, but I read a book that I enjoy, and my brain attempts to duplicate that book. Sort of, kind of, maybe the same sort of thing, because it results in false starts and dead ends. It’s a tough lesson to learn, and one that I learn again and again.
Scoot on over there and have a read.
Michael Seidel, writer 