You know what I think one of the hardest things about this creative life is?
The daily slog.
You know what I mean by that, right?
It’s the day-in-day-out, stay the course, taking one small action every day, sometimes doing the same things over and over for days and weeks on end.
But the monotony isn’t even the thing that gets me the most.
It’s the uncertainty. The wondering. The never knowing what will finally end up working, sticking. Never knowing when all the hard work will actually, finally, at last pay off.
I feel this so hard.
And then something miraculous happens. Like, one of my clients wins a manuscript contest and her book will be coming out in just two weeks.
Or, like, one of my clients, who’s been working with me for two years now, just signed with her agent last week.
That’s right! Her name is Molly Katt, and she wrote her memoir with me as her editor in 2020. She finished the draft in less than one year, following my coaching, editing and framework in Nonfiction Bootcamp. Her book, Mom Genes, tells the story of growing up with an abusive mother who suffered from undiagnosed bipolar and borderline personality disorder, and Molly’s own journey and struggle with deciding to become a mom herself.
Molly spent all of 2021 putting finishing touches on her manuscript, querying agents, even starting on a book proposal. She got multiple requests for full manuscripts, but none of them were a fit.
Until finally. It was query magic number 68 that landed for her. The agent requested her manuscript at the beginning of December, loved it, and followed up after the holidays for a call.
Stories like these—the contest prize, the agent—remind me why the daily slog of the creative life is so so important. You see, Molly had to send those 67 other query letters otherwise she never would have found her agent. But when you are in the midst of sending number 23, 45, 57, it’s easy to get lost in the mire of wondering if it’s even worth it. What is one more query?
But, it only takes one.
And the beauty is that if something like that can happen to Molly, then guess what? It can happen for you, too.
If you take yourself seriously. If you invest in yourself. If you give yourself the time, energy, attention and, yes, sometimes money, to go after the things you want. If you do the work, each and every day, the words will accumulate, the queries will accumulate, and soon, you will see that the hard work does, indeed, pay off.
I would love nothing more than to see a story like this in your future. It is possible. Do you believe it is?
I do.
You may just need a little bit of help, and that’s okay. That’s what my team and I are here for. If you’d like to start putting in the daily work so that you can one day have a story like Molly’s, then I encourage you to apply to work with me and my team this year. We’re now taking ongoing enrollments. Apply here now.