I'm currently feasting on over cooked despondency with lashings of doubt, topped with self deprecation about my writing, and looking for a glimmer of hope that perhaps I can do it and it's worth persevering.
Please could you give me feedback on the piece which I submitted to the Bath Short Story Competition (not long listed) - The Face of a Life. I've posted it on my profile.
It's the 3rd competition submission I've not even touched the selected long list.
Much appreciated.
Ah don't feel like that.
The one thing that successful writers seem to have in common is not giving up.
I think part of the issue is that it's so hard to get feedback so you don't know if what you're doing is good or bad or where you're going wrong.
And for record, I've just read through the winning entries of the Historical Writing competition and now I'm feeling that despondency which usually leads me to some quiet backwoods close to the Mississippi where Mark Twain puffs on a fine cigar, blows out a huge smoke ring, leans over toward me, and suggests with a wry smile that maybe it's time I return to sawing wood! Sigh... :-(
I edited part of a chapter yesterday - the same one I edited last week in the vain (as it turned out) hope the hole in my outline would be miraculously filled by the spark of an idea which fiddling with the previous narrative might generate.
Eww...that was a long sentence ;)
This is book 3, so you'd think by now I'd have learned the knack of wriggling my way out of a writing black hole. But no.
Just keep on trying. That's all any of us can do :)