Don't Punish Yourself...Let Others Do It

How often do you sit there, manuscript in hand, wailing over your uselessness and wondering why God created such a worthless specimen as yourself?

Oh. Just me then is it. Oh you do too? Phew. For one moment I thought I was alone in that.

So, to the only other writer who put their hand up and admitted it, this advice is for you:

Don't punish yourself. Let other people do it.

Publishers, agents and magazines employ people to go through manuscripts and accept/reject them. Why are you doing their job?

As a writer, our job is to write to the best level we can, improve our writing through practice and reading the work of others, submit work to professionals and move on to the next project. It is NOT to pre-reject ourselves.

We do not, usually, have our finger on the pulse of publishing and the literary world. We have a rough idea of what's going on but that's all. On top of which, new strands have to start somewhere. JK Rowling started one, why not us. Of course that's unlikely, but I doubt the publishers thought it would be as big a success as it turned out to be.

And that's the point: we don't know. Our useless piece of garbage, created by a piece of trash that God must regret allowing to exist may be the one that creates or re-invigorates, a genre.

Have a bit of faith in yourself, as I can tell you this one thing for certain: God has faith in you.