Everyone can write. Right? Alright.

Writing is a hard thing to do well, we all know that. Some of us were just born with the gift, some of us worked hard to develop it, and some of us have done both. But the one common denominator is hard work. Talent will only get you so far, as is the case with anything you choose to tackle in life. Even the most talented among us have to work hard to craft a novel.

What makes writing unique, is that when you tell people you are a writer, many of them will blurt out how they themselves want to write a book. When I tell people I'm a musician, that I play guitar and sing, they never say "Oh I'm going to write a song and sell it." Why is that?

I guess the reason is that with writing, we all learn it growing up. We don't all learn how to play music or sing. The barrier to entry is far lower with writing because essentially, everyone can write to some extent. Telling stories on the other hand, that is not something everyone can do.

Writing a novel of 60,000 or 80,000 words is far more complex than whim writers want to believe. Of all the "non writer" people I've run into over the years who said "I want to write a book" not a single one of them has done it. A few have tried and quit after about 30,000 words but most never get that far. I used to know a guy who claimed to be a hardcore Sci-Fi writer. He wrote a 120,000 word story, sent it out to two agents, got an unflattering rejection from one, and that was the end of it. I don't know where that writer is today but he's never published anything. I don't even know if he's still writing.

I'm working on my seventh novel length story and that's nothing compared to some writers. Of those seven, only two have ever been shopped to agents. One of those is The Sweet Sixteenth that ended up as my pilot eBook program, the other is being rewritten. The rest of them are junk, practice, good old trunk novels. The point is writing one book is not even enough in most cases. You have to write many before you finally "get it" and rejection is going to come along the way.

Thick skin and determination are just as important as talent in this game. Rejection does suck, no two ways about it. But if you don't get back on the bike, you will never learn to ride. You have to be able to crash, get up, wipe off the blood and/or push your brains back into your skull cavity, and move on. You also might want to leave your teeth on the ground after the first crash, because they will get kicked in again. Just be like a professional hockey player and get your teeth fixed after you retire.