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There Is No Going Back
The destiny of being a writer
You might have heard the phrase and metaphor of burning your ships and moving forward if you want to succeed. Explorer, Hernan Cortez, when he and his men came to the new world, burned their ships (historically, I think he sank them) so that they could not go back to Spain. Having no option but to stay in what would become Mexico, his men were forced to succeed.
In exploration, maybe in war, and definitely in successful ventures such as writing a book, this is exactly the attitude we must have.
Going back to what?
There comes a time in a writer’s career when the realization that there is no going back becomes evident. By not going back, I mean back to being a non-writer.
In the past, I met writers who would tell me tales of working on novels for years. Some had been writing for over twenty years, never sold a novel, have never experienced what some might call success, but they are unable to stop writing. Were they delusional? Why would they keep writing and wasting their time when it appeared that their dream of future publication had failed? Why keep getting rejected and disappointed? Why not admit that maybe this wasn’t their thing and try something different?
