Odds

What are our chances of becoming a best-selling novelist? About 11,600 hardcover fiction books are published a year. Only about 90 sold 100,00 copies or more, less than 10 sold over 1 million. Odds, then, are around 1 in 125. That's if you find someone willing to publish your book, in the first place.

Long odds. Something else has to make it worth it. Make buying and learning how to work a computer and all the problems that brings, worth it. Something that makes the workshops, critic sessions, the rejections, worth it. If you ask, most writers say there was never a choice. It isn't that they want to write, it is that they must.

For every writer who must write and was published, there are over 125 writers, most of which are must writers, who have failed. So be it.

Frank Lloyd Wright said, the truth is more important than the facts. The truth, the truth I will listen to, is that if Dianne Wilson Elliott or Kaki Warner hadn't ignored the facts and gone ahead to write, anyway, there would be no chance that I would read Forever and Beyond or Pieces of Sky.

I think the truth here; my truth is I must write, I must try, today, despite fear. Fear of failure or fear of success. Oh, yes, always both fears. Fear of failure and the mirrored fear of succeeding. That nagging worry of success and its impact. For a writer who wants nothing more than to work away in the office without thought or worry about those other things that publishing brings: deadlines, promotion, networking, social obligations, the thought of success can be overwhelming.

I get panicky when I think that way. Silly, but I do. Another truth is, I have to do, try. I have to let go of what will happen or not happen and let it. Difficult to do when so much is riding on that. Difficult to do when so much is already beyond my control.

Again, truth is, I must.