Thoughts on Moving Forward...

Looking down the long road of my inability to work on Aeris like I want to, I've been considering the feelings of success and failure.  That's what they are, feelings.  Like how you FEEL after you read a book and decide whether to love it or hate it.

As an author, I'm faced with failure every day.  Like I said, Aeris in a state of failure for me, right now, failure to finish.  There is also the failure to achieve... I didn't make the goals I wanted.  I didn't sell the amount of books I'd hoped to.  I didn't get the type of reviews I wanted.

My mom was up to help with New Baby and we discussed a friend of mine who supposedly wants to be a photographer.  She has taken all the classes and bought all the equipment, and yet she has yet to book a shoot or set up her website portfolio.  And when I talk to her about it, she as all these plans, and is enthused, but can't seem to make it past the start of the race.

"She's afraid of failure," said my mom and I couldn't help but agree.

Failure holds us back.  It tells us we're worth nothing, that we'll never make it, that we don't have what it takes to be SUCCESSFUL.  It is that shadowy plague that grips us and keeps us from moving forward.

I have faced down a lot of things that would make a normal person give up, maybe.  My book has been slammed in some reviews.  My very FIRST fan email was not a fan email at ALL, but a letter from an angry reader who felt like I'd insulted the people who lived in the area where the book takes place.  Sad, huh?  :)  As I mentioned in the first story about Six Keys, it was the book that almost WASN'T, as I had a huge data loss right at the beginning of writing it.  And now, during Aeris, I've had death, birth, hardship and loss of sleep interfering in my ability to write it.

But for me, failure is not trying.  That sounds trite and it probably is, but man alive, I would rather have 50 one star reviews than not have a finished book.  If I hadn't had the guts to finish Six Keys, I would never have started Compis, which is part of a series that I'm so passionate about writing (and finishing! hahaha).

I keep referring myself to that motto from "Meet the Robinsons": Keep Moving Forward.  Learn from what you can learn from and use it when you start your next project.  Face those stumbling blocks and use them as stepping stools and you will truly have made a success of yourself.

********Reader Goodies!!!

I just read two great indie books:

Gifts of the Blood by Vicki Keire -This is the story of Caspia, who is running herself ragged to support herself and her terminally ill brother.  Descriptive, well-written, and much too short for my taste! hahaha  5 stars

Red by Kait Nolan- Told from two perspectives, Elodie's and Sawyer's, and is one of the best werewolf books I've read.  It also made me want to read books with werewolves in them again, which I thought would never happen after I read Shiver.  This got an enthusiastic 5 stars from me as well.  (Read the review for a disclaimer from me, I got this book in a giveaway.)

I have another entry to write soon, about a book I was a beta reader for, Parallel by Claudia Lafeve, but New Baby calls, so I have to go.

Happy Reading!