Confessions of a Writer: The Ugly Truth About Being a Writer

"I am a writer."

When I say this, people stop in their tracks and say, "Oh, how cool..." and then the questions start. "What have you written? Do you have any books? Have you ever done a book signing?"

Writing seems to be considered a glamorous job, and many are envious of my ability to write, my career working from home, my published books, you name it.

Writing is not a glamorous job at all. I'm not up in the ranks of Grisham or Brown or King, and I've never had anything hit a bestseller's list (yet), and perhaps the fame that comes with writing bestselling novels does appear a bit glamorous, but when it comes right down to it, writing is just a job, like any other job, and you do have to work at it.

Don't get me wrong, I love to write, to create, build characters, build worlds, build fantasies and nightmares. I wouldn't trade what I do for anything. However, if you've never been up against a deadline, 3am, when the passion has burned out of you, and your editor has flat out said it MUST be on his desk in the morning and you are 60 pages short... well, let's just say, writing doesn't seem quite so glamorous in those moments.

So let's dispel some of the mystique and glamour many associate with a writing career:

Rejection Stings

When I first started writing as a hobby, everyone told me I was good. My friends, my family, strangers, blog readers... all of them said the same thing - you've got talent! They loved to read my writing, and I loved the feedback and the ego boost that came from it.

So I finally sat down and wrote my first novel, pouring my heart and soul into it, bleeding my emotions on the page, building characters that became my best friends and my worst enemies while I wrote. I believed I was good, and I believed my manuscript was good too.

Then the torture began. I submitted it to agents and publishers alike. The rejections rolled in. Some didn't even bother to read it, just sent me back a generic, "Thanks, but no thanks." Others read part of it and basically sent me a letter telling me that the novel I'd put more than a year of my life into was 'trite', 'boring', 'not unique', 'not compelling'.