I have accepted that, in order be successful, I need failure. I need it because it underscores how important something is to me. And, if I let it, failure will fuel my determination and my focus. I’ve done more than just eat brownies and stay in my pajamas since I got those rejections. In spite of how miserable I felt, I still got up, closed the door of my office every day, and wrote. There are many things in life that we can’t control. The subjectivity of someone’s opinion about our work is one of them.
Failure after fifty isn’t really that much different than failure after twenty, except that we all sweat the time-running-out thing. Maybe that’s why I feel so passionately about accepting the invitation to go deeper into the heart of what I love and reaffirm my chosen purpose. I’ll either become a viable novelist or die trying. It feels to me like two good alternatives.