Laura Resnick, multi-published author (Polterheist, the fifth Esther Diamond novel, available Nov. 6, 2012),writes on perseverance and other requirements of the writing life.

My own repeated experience and repeated observation is that while every individual road to success is different and cannot be replicated, there is one key factor which is essential and decides everything: Writing and submitting, writing and submitting, writing and submitting (or these days, it might also/instead be "writing and self-publishing, writing and self-publishing, writing and self-publishing") is the key factor that makes the difference.

In other words, hard work and perseverance. In my own repeated experience and in all my observation of our profession for many years, these are the two reliable game-changers for every writer.

If you keep writing and submitting, writing and submitting, writing and submitting (or writing and self-publishing, writing and self-publishing) etc., sooner or later, the boulder moves.

And the one guarantee is that if a writer does NOT persevere, then the boulder never moves It just stays blocking the road forever.

The good news is that hard work and perseverance are choices we can make. Factors we can control.

Six years ago exactly, I went within a couple of weeks from what seemed to be a very good position to a very bad position overnight. My publisher (previously full of big talk about what they'd do for me) dumped me after one book  Within weeks, I also lost my latest big shot agent. (Technically, I fired the agent; but that's like saying, "I filed for divorce after discovering my spouse had left me.") And since this had happened multiple times by now in my career, with publishers and with agents, I felt utterly exhausted and very discouraged. I sat around for months in a dark depression, barely able to get out of bed. I wondered if it was the end of my full-time, self-supporting writing career, especially since the market was entering the turmoil it's been in ever since. I wondered how I would pay rent, buy food, etc. It was a very low time for me.

But I went back to the one thing I know how to do, which is persevere, and I got back in the game yet again (for the fourth or fifth time). And that was before all the new opportunities available to us now.

I am not more talented than other writers. I am certainly not a better person. I am not better connected. But I know how to persevere--which, luckily, is one of the few things in this business that we have control over.

We can't go back in time and change decisions we now wish we hadn't made. We cannot individually change the publishing culture that screws up so many writers' books and career and heads. In any new decisions we make, there will be factors we can't control (it has just occurred to me that I have a book being released in a few days, and some of the stock has probably been destroyed by Hurricane Sandy, and some of the stock will never make it to market because of transportation chaos all over the East, and buying novels probably won't be the first thing on everyone's mind in the east and northeast in the coming weeks, etc.).

But we can control how hard we work and whether we keep trying--even after a seemingly good decision has turned out very, very disappointing results for us.
Visit Laura Resnick's site Laura's site, http://www.sff.net/people/laresnick/

Whoop-tee-do! 

Great excitement on the Judy-computer today.

It has been months in the making but...

finally, I'm able to return to this page with an announcement I've waited a long time to make, 

and here is is:

As of the end of October (Happy Halloween, everyone) the first tranche of my backlist is now accessible through one site: Open Roads Integrated Media. 

The Golden Bangles trilogy: 

Dream Man, Moonlight Man, and Sharing Sunrise are among
the first of these, 

along with A Scent of Roses.




http://www.openroadmedia.com/authors/judy-g-gill.aspx

The link above will take you to my personal page at ORM where you'll find other links under "Buy The Book". Depending on your e-reading preference, you can buy from Amazon, Apple, B & N, Google, Kobo, Overdrive, and Sony. Audible.com, a company I've dealt with for years for my own listening pleasure, has also chosen Dream Man as a freebie for an introductory offer if you want to join Audible.

When I elected to take Dream Man and put it into electronic format, I no longer had a digital copy, so I scanned it, page by page until I had one. Then, I started at the very beginning and did a complete rewrite, as if it was a first draft. It took a while, but eventually I finished and am delighted to reintroduce to the reading world, Max McKenzie, whom women can't resist and few try to, and Jeannie Leslie who is his both his polar opposite and at the same time, exactly like him in that she has no intention, ever, of falling in love. She's seen what that did to her beloved sister, Sharon, and "ain't havin' none" for herself.

So, what happens when Max and Jeannie get caught in a cave-in and think they're destined to die?  Can either one leave this life with important words unsaid, secretly longed-for acts uncommitted? They cannot, but, they're rescued... And, now what?