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Times are tough. The economy is in bad shape and the publishing business is worse. It’s certainly not a good time to start a writing career. Yet, here I am trying to do just that. At times it feels utterly futile and I’ve found myself questioning my sanity a lot lately. I’m not one of those writers who are driven to write every day or go mad from all the pent up creativity waiting to escape. I will not go crazy if I can’t write. Still, I love to write. Writing is the activity in my life that I love the most with reading right behind it. Writing fiction makes me very happy. I would like nothing more than to become a career fiction author and I think that can and will happen. Yet, in these hard economic times it’s difficult to keep the faith. It’s easy to feel despondent and much harder to be hopeful. My way of dealing with an uncertain future is to go back to the basics—affirming my faith in the choices I’ve made and believing in myself. Everyday I do one thing as an act of faith in myself and the future. For me that includes writing, exercising or meditation. Each of these are activities that I do for myself—at this point no one else is invested in me doing any of them. I write because it’s what I love. I exercise and meditate because they keep me grounded and hopefully healthy. Believe me there are days when I don’t do any of these things. However, more and more now I’m determined to do what I can to keep myself sane and on track. These are things that I can control in my life. For the things that I can’t control in my life, like the economy, the publishing business, and a million other things, I’m cultivating grace and acceptance. In other words, “. . .the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.” The one constant we can count on in life is change. So although times are tough now I know at a certain point the tide will change. When that happens I want to be ready to catch the wave.
