Today's guest blogger is Russ Masterson, author of 40 Days Without Food. Russ never cared much about writing until one day, as a 20-year-old college student, he found himself stuck in a hotel room in Ghana, Africa, with a nasty rash and an urge to pick up the pen. After the birth of his writing dream, Russ went on to earn a degree from the University of Georgia. His first book released last year.
What's the best advice I've received about writing? Two tips which I've found helpful:
1. Keep writing. The only way to discover your voice and strengthen your skill is to write more. There’s no shortcut. You can talk and dream about writing, but at some point you have to get work done. Sit down and write. So you’ve received sixty-three rejection emails – feel like a failure for a few minutes, then sit down and write some more. This idea of rejection brings me to the second bit of advice...
2. Glean your self-worth from somewhere more stable than that which you produce. When my first book was published, and the reader reviews began to appear on the Amazon sale page, the third review contained several negative comments about my writing. Initially I wanted to search for the lady’s home address, drive to her house, and jam her cat in the microwave. I decided that may not be prudent, so I lay in bed wondering if any of this is worth it—putting yourself out there for such a beating.
I knew my value, or even giftedness, shouldn’t be judged by one person’s opinion, and even while remembering all the compliments from my agent and publisher and friends, I couldn’t shake that review. It sounds ridiculous, even shallow to write those words now, but it’s so easy to glean from approval, or even comparison, building an inner case for value.
I wrote this in an online interview shortly after becoming published:
“You think becoming published will give you some feeling of completion; that reaching this achievement will do something inside of you, and for a few weeks you do feel some gratitude for the opportunity and the work you've been able to do. Then you see the books ahead of you on lists and form reasons why your book should be selling more copies than those books. So, yes becoming published was exciting and rewarding, but then you, in some way, recalibrate to the new position and end up feeling the same as you did when you were unpublished. The entire process has helped me see that trying to squeeze value out of achievement is tiring and pointless.”
We all justify our existence with something—cars, jobs, relationships, book sales. Grace brings rest because our existence is validated before we produce. We can detach from the shortcomings in ourselves and our lives. The differential between where we think we should be and where we are can wash away. Becoming comfortable in your own skin sounds cliché, but I see no other way to liberty.
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