Yesterday’s post was just a bit of fun, mostly inspired by the number of markets I’ve seen close up and the number of editors I’ve seen quit editing at the very moment one of my stories was under consideration or even on the short list. It’s been quite a year.

I’m really grateful to have seen my fiction published for the first time (thanks again, Electric Spec). I’ve signed up for “writing intensives” and workshops. I’ve joined and quit three different online critique groups. I even hired an editor to give me one-on-one critique. I’ve started getting up earlier and earlier every weekday morning to give myself more time to write.

This last thing, making more time to write, doing it more consistently and very nearly every day, has had a greater effect on what I’m doing than any of the rest of it. I think critique groups and workshops can be useful, but I’ve become skeptical of them. They’re most useful at drumming into the beginner’s mind a lot of “thou shalt not” rules, which can be great for the beginner so clueless he or she really has no idea where to start. The closer your writing gets to being publishable, though, the less useful such groups really are. If you want to make that transition from competent fiction-writing technician to confident literary artist, it’s probably more useful to shrug off the “thou shalt not” list. Push yourself to color outside the lines a little.

Yes, getting published is hard. It’s absurdly hard, really. There are few endeavors I’ve encountered in life that require such hard work for such uncertain feedback and such distant rewards. If you set a goal of running a marathon, or becoming a great copier salesman or learning to cook desserts, you’re likely to find easier ways to measure your success and fewer frustrations between commencement of diligent work and the achievement of your goals, than if you set the goal of getting your stories out there into the world. This is a goal more like aspiring to become an astronaut, or an Olympic decathlete, or an actor in motion pictures.

Far, far more applicants than available positions.

But once your heart and mind are fixed, even knowing the difficult odds, you just keep pushing forward. Another rejection doesn’t make you think “Maybe I’m not cut out for this.” You just file it away, and you don’t stop. You do what you have to do.