One of my past English teachers would say that I already am a writer, defining "writer" as "a person who writes." She'd argue that since I write a blog post every morning, I write every morning and therefore am a writer. But I'm not really satisfied with that.
I'd like to submit something to be published. But in order for something to be published, it (theoretically) has to be good. I've received compliments on some of my blog posts, and I've been given the advice to submit a few of them for publication in church magazines. That would be huge! I'm a bit worried, though. I kind of doubt that any of my blog posts are good enough to be published in the Ensign. I guess I'll never know unless I try.
Wayne Gretzky, a famous hockey player, once said, "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." If I never submit anything to be published, I will never be a published author, even if my writing is terrific, which I doubt.
Yet, why should I doubt my writing? I've gotten As on most of my papers in school, I've gotten compliments on my blog posts, and even without the positive feedback, I have to admit that, statistically speaking, at least some of my writing has got to be worth reading, simply because I've been writing so much. I've written blog posts, ranging in length from a few paragraphs to a few pages, at least once per day for almost a full, consecutive year. I've easily written over 300 spiritually-themed blog posts. So even if the odds of any given blog post of mine being worth reading is half of one precent, odds are, I've got at least one good blog post in here somewhere, and I'm pretty sure my odds are at least slightly better than that. After all, I have to admit that I'm a fair writer.
So why not take a stab at getting something published? It'll take a little bit of editing to improve any given blog post to make it more fit for publication, but I've got some good rough drafts here. And it's not like submitting anything to the Ensign will cost me anything. It's free, apart from the time that it takes to write and edit a submission. There is a little bit of risk, though. I have a(n irrational,) petrifying fear of failure. If I submit a blog post and it gets published, I'll be on top of the world, but if I submit a bunch of blog posts and none of them get published... Well, let's just say that it won't affect my self-esteem in any positive way.
But still, weighing the supernaturally inspiring and exciting potential results of success against the minimally depressing potential results from failure, then factoring in my estimated odds of success verses failure, I'm pretty sure that it's worth a shot. I'm reasonably certain that if I submit enough half-decent blog posts (and I'm confident that many of my blog posts are at least half-decent) then odds are that they'll like at least one of them, and if they like it enough to publish it, that will make me extremely happy. It's definitely worth a shot, and if I ever feel otherwise, I'll just remind myself to read this blog post.
Self-pep-talks are awesome.
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