This post is part of the A-Z Blogging Challenge 2015. If this is something new to you, check out the website here to find out all you need to know.
Have faith in yourself
Believing in yourself, and trusting in your own abilities is probably in the list of top five struggles for a writer or student.
The journey for both is full of peaks and troughs, with enthusiasm and ideas propelling us at the start, but when they start to wane part way through a project or module it can be difficult to maintain momentum to keep going.
If work is assessed (for the student) or under consideration (for the writer) a bad result from either can feel like a body blow, making us question whether we have the ability to carry on, and whether we've really got what to takes to push past the hard times and be a success.
Having shown a few of my stories to different people, I've found that I get very different reactions from them. Some like the story, some find room for improvement where others think it's perfectly acceptable. The truth is you can never please everyone all of the time, but there will probably be someone out there that likes what you're doing.
You need to just hold on to that spark that got you going in the first place, let it burn within you and have faith that if you're enjoying the journey, even when it's tough, then you're on the right path. With a little perseverance, and a thick skin, you will find those people out there that are your target audience. They are most definitely out there, waiting to discover you.
It can be very confusing getting mixed messages from your readers! But I guess all you can do is listen to everything they say, be honest with yourself about what rings true, and go with that in revisions (if you feel any are needed).
ReplyDeleteIt can be very hard to sift through the feedback, and when I started out I felt I needed to change it all. These days I'm more confident about what I'm doing, and I'm better able to decide what's needed based on suggestions.
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