Writing is hard. But it’s not just writing a book and completing it that makes it so tough. It’s the edits, revisions, agonizing over every word and phrase, the queries, the rejections that slice through your heart, more revisions, and more, the new queries, the last bit of hope you saved, the despair and self-loathing, the waiting and tearing hair out, then more rejections….

It’s enough to make any writer depressed. We want to give up and move on. Tell ourselves that we’re not good — we weren’t meant to write and make a career from it. Even those who have been published before are feeling this over-whelming sense of failure. 

I know how it feels. I’m there right now, somewhere in the midst of the “despair and self-loathing” category. But this isn’t a post to tell you “you ARE awesome, just keep querying”. Instead, this post is about how to use your pain to make your work better. 

Not everyone wants to hear the hard truths. The heart-wreching crits from readers, agents, editors, other writers…But consider this: when you’ve been criticized in the past for things, did it make you mad? Want to prove them wrong? Show them you can be better and “do the damn  thang”? There you go. That’s your new muse.

Take those harsh crits, and learn to make yourself better. Research prose and opening lines, learn to hook your reader and add tension. LEARN. Learning is good people. This is how we know what we know. So take that pain and anger and focus it on your writing. There’s always room for improvement — ALWAYS. We never stop aging and growing as a person, so why should our writing be any different?