Struggling As A Writer? You Are Not Alone!

Apr 23, 2010 | No Comments | @andrewmarcec

Many of us as writers are incredibly self absorbed at times, and with good right.  We see the successful writers who deserve it, and we see the successful writers who don’t and we think to ourselves, “Well, if that can get published, then I’m a shoe-in!”

Sometimes those results don’t come as we please though, and we become more and more disgruntled as the rejection letters pile up around us.  This can get to us, makes us second guess every word we put to the page, and even sometimes make us ask ourselves why we even try.

This is a tough process for everyone, so don’t feel as if you are the only one that this is happening to.  In fact, a lot of writers who’s work you admire, and have been inspired by have been in this very spot.  Let’s look at just a few.

John’s work took a few novels, but eventually it grew on me.  His psychological thrillers are definitely some of the best on the market, and he easily works in quite a bit of horror elements into his work as well.  He’s been writing for over 30 years now, and is quite successful with the towns and characters he’s created, but it wasn’t always this way.

According to the bio from the Official John Saul website:

After leaving college, he decided the best thing for a college dropout to do was become a writer, and spent the next fifteen years working in various jobs while attempting to write a book someone would want to publish. Should anyone ever want to write a novel concerning the car-rental industry or the travails of temporary typists, John can provide excellent background material.

Those years garnered him a nice collection of unpublished manuscripts, but not a lot of money. Eventually he found an agent in New York, who spent several years sending his manuscripts around, and trying to make the rejection slips sound hopeful. Then, in 1976, one of his manuscripts reached Dell, who didn’t want to buy it, but asked if he’d be interested in writing a psychological thriller. He put together an outline, and crossed his fingers.

Pretty amazing story, and at the same time shows you that all you need to do is hard work.  You don’t need to have a college degree or even be trained as a writer, you just have to have the passion to be a storyteller.

I think that one of the most impressive authors out there, and of course most famous, is Stephen King.  His writing style is one that always appealed to me, giving me nightmares from his graphic descriptions.  However even as a child his books used to scare me.  My dad used to read everything Stephen King released, then he would keep those books in a box in the basement.  I remember finding that box one day, and was terrified by the covers.  A green hand reaching out of a sewer grate, a loosely bandaged hand covered in eyeballs, the slobbering jaws of a wild dog.

However these images would have never been made if he didn’t barrel through the rejection, keep on going and eventually write Carrie.

According to the bio from the Official Stephen King website:

Stephen made his first professional short story sale (“The Glass Floor”) to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men’s magazines. Many of these were later gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.

In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching high school English classes at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.

In the spring of 1973, Doubleday & Co. accepted the novel Carrie for publication. On Mother’s Day of that year, Stephen learned from his new editor at Doubleday, Bill Thompson, that a major paperback sale would provide him with the means to leave teaching and write full-time.

There is actually a compilation of Stephen’s short stories that is comprised of stories deemed “unpublishable”, several were adapted for films.  Take that!

Let’s check out an author’s story who has a similar style of writing to Stephen King.

According to the bio from the Official Dean Koontz website:

Dean Koontz was born and raised in Pennsylvania. He graduated from Shippensburg State College (now Shippensburg University), and his first job after graduation was with the Appalachian Poverty Program, where he was expected to counsel and tutor underprivileged children on a one-to-one basis. His first day on the job, he discovered that the previous occupier of his position had been beaten up by the very kids he had been trying to help and had landed in the hospital for several weeks. The following year was filled with challenge but also tension, and Koontz was more highly motivated than ever to build a career as a writer. He wrote nights and weekends, which he continued to do after leaving the poverty program and going to work as an English teacher in a suburban school district outside Harrisburg. After a year and a half in that position, his wife, Gerda, made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: “I’ll support you for five years,” she said, “and if you can’t make it as a writer in that time, you’ll never make it.” By the end of those five years, Gerda had quit her job to run the business end of her husband’s writing career.

So remember the next time you’re frustrated, or ask yourself if it is even worth it, read your favorite author’s story.  Read about the struggles they went through to get where they are, I guarantee it will make you feel better, I know it always helps me.


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