A Writer Gives Thanks

A writer’s life is not for everyone.

There is something about that blink, blink, blink cursor on an empty page that could drive a person to the brink of insanity. There is rejection at every step.. There are days when notes from a CP appear in the inbox and suck the wind from sails. There is the lure of six seasons stacked up on Netflix and closets that need organizing and a million other ways to procrastinate a writing session away. There is rejection. Did I mention that already?

BUT… today is Thanksgiving, so instead I’d like to talk about everything that makes me grateful to be a writer.

That blink, blink, blinking cursor. It is possibility. It is imagination unleashed. It is a playground with an extra twisty slide and a zip line. It is sheer fun and limitless possibilities. I am most grateful for this.

I am grateful for tough notes from critique partners, beta readers, my agent, and my editor. The time they put into those notes means they believe in my story and in making it better. It means they are invested right alongside me.

Well, there’s no way to sugarcoat rejection. Or is there? Helpful rejections make you stronger, make your focus tighter, show you ways to improve, make your stories better. Sometimes something might look like a rejection, but is really a redirection and a door opening elsewhere.  I am grateful for those.

I am grateful for the kidlit community we all share. I may spend my days in pajamas (forget what I said earlier- I believe I am most grateful for THIS!) staring at a monitor, but I love venturing out of the house if it means meeting up with kidlit types. This year I loved seeing and making friends at the NE-SCBWI conference, BEA, the Boston Book Festival, an NCTE conference tweet-up, as well as numerous book launches and my two monthly writer groups. Knowing this community is out there, sharing in success and hugging out those rejections warms my heart more than pumpkin pie and hot cocoa.

I hope you’ll take a few minutes this Thanksgiving to thank your muse, your critique partner, your agent, your readers, or your fellow bloggers and just revel in the fact that we’re pretty darn lucky. At the very least, it beats having any of these jobs!