Dare to Share

I watched a video today that gave me chills. It was about a man and his relationship with his father. (Hmmm, pretty appropriate since Father’s Day is Sunday) Anyway, as a youth, the boy wasn’t proud of his father. He thought he was poor and didn’t have a great job and wasn’t all that great. When he got older, he didn’t have much time for his father and vowed he would be a better man than his dad by having a better job and making more money. Once his father died, the young man found letters addressed to him where his father had made donations in his name to a hospital. When he was young, the man’s father tried to get him to understand how important it was to give. However, the young man didn’t understand exactly what his father meant, until he found the letters and made a visit to the hospital. I thought the video was touching, but it was also disheartening. Why?

Make New Friends…

I love to write. I’m pretty sure most have figured that out by now and it isn’t something I have to keep blasting to the world. But what I really love about writing, besides being able to manipulate lives (muwaaahaaaa), is the camaraderie between authors. I stepped into this creative arena pretty unsuccessfully a few years ago. I dove in, head first, filling the readers head with enough backstory and characters to choke a horse. Needless to say, I have tons of rejection letters (yes, I keep them, my little badges of honor).

I was ready to give up. Everyone I knew that read anything I wrote always said I wrote well. That they liked my stories. So what was the problem? If my friends liked it, why didn’t the literary agents and publishers? Why?