My Rollercoaster of a Writing Life

Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking. If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

May 4 question - It's the best of times; it's the worst of times. What are your writer highs (the good times)? And what are your writer lows (the crappy times)?

The awesome co-hosts for the May 4 posting of the IWSG are Kim Elliott, Melissa Maygrove, Chemist Ken, Lee Lowery, and Nancy Gideon! Be sure to check out their posts as well as the rest of the blog hop when you're finished here!

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Writing and publishing life can definitely be a rollercoaster of highs and lows. Sometimes it swings you around upside down, too, and you can either end up giddy or nauseated. 

But still, it's a ride I can't seem to stop getting back in line for. So, here's a few of my personal highs and lows so far. 

Having my work chosen is always a giant high. 

I've been fortunate to experience this on a few fronts: signing book contracts, getting good reviews, having my story selected for anthologies, getting mentioned in a good light in a review for an anthology, seeing my work mentioned in a list, meeting a reader who tells me my work mattered to them. 

A little praise and recognition goes a long way in helping you overcome self-doubt and persevere. It's a little light against the lonely darkness of rejection and criticism. 

It's even better when the happy little mention or opportunity comes from someone you don't know at all in real life. (That way the brain weasels can't convince you that they only like your work out of pity or friendship).  

On the flip side of that, is the feeling that you fell for something, bought the scam, believed the con.

Like when the first publishing house to publish me imploded, and I felt like a fool--like I should somehow have known.  

Or the time I spent money on an artist who never produced the promised work. Or events I planned or participated in that flopped. Or the time I paid for advertising that didn't net me any results. 

There's risk in trusting and sometimes the risk bites you.

Clairvoyance is not one of my gifts, so all I can do is make decisions with the data I have at the time, and hope I won't come to regret them later. And if I do, at least I can hope to learn from them, and turn them into amusing gallows-humor stories to share with my writing friends. 

Now those are both big public hills of the rollercoaster. Behind the scenes, in the quiet room where a girl sits in her office tapping away at her keyboard, there are plenty of highs and lows as well. 

There's the low that always seems to sneak up and smack me three-quarters of the way through a project, a sudden drop in momentum that makes it difficult to keep moving and makes the next section of writing feel like fighting a stiff wind that wants to blow you over.  

Those are not fun moments in the ride, and often I have only made it through out of a combination of personal stubbornness and the support of truly excellent friends who won't let me give up easily. 

Other times, it feels like I'm just a conduit, and the words flow through me as easily as water, each keystroke a touch of magic that only makes the rest seem easier. 

In those moments, I'm some kind of untouchable hero--I can do no wrong. I look at the me that was struggling the day before and wonder what the heck was wrong with that girl. 

But really, the lows are well worth it, and the highs more than compensate. And a bad day of writing? It's like bad pizza. It's still pretty okay, you know? 

So, what keeps you going when the going gets rough in your endeavors? What gives you the heart to go on? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments! 

And, hey, if you've read anything I wrote, leave a review! Reviews don't have to be long to really help boost an author's visibility (and make their day!). Heck, they don't even have to be positive--critical reviews are useful, too. You can find most of my work here: http://bit.ly/SamanthaBryant