The Rocky Road to Authorship #Perseverance #Learn from Others

 

 

Have too many rejections plus well-meaning friends discouraging you until you are ready to trash your computer and throw away your pens and paper? If so, read on. 

Emile Loring, the author from whom I learned the most about writing, dedicated one of her 50  books to a friend who helped her on "the rocky road to authorship." Knowing that she struggled made us sisters in the craft. It encouraged me to "keep on keeping on" when mountain-sized boulders blocked the way. If my role model refused to quit when the going became tough, so would I.

It helped that some of her heroines were or wanted to be authors. I shared their triumphs and learned from their mistakes. 

Lucy Maud Montgomery, is the author of the beloved Anne of Green Gables series, a poignant look into the life of a young girl with big dreams. The Emily of New Moon stories are even more so. I just finished re-reading the trilogy and heartily recommend to any writer seeking encouragement. Published in 1925-27, the titles tug at the heartstrings and bring peals of laughter.

It seems that everything the eleven-year-old orphan does is wrong. Emily Byrd Starr can get in trouble with her Aunt Elizabeth, the rest of the clan, and their hidebound community without trying. Chief among Emily's "offenses," is her burning desire to write and one day become an author. Much of the stories are told in first person diary entries. Note: I normally don't care for either first person or too-long diary entries, but the writing and plot transcend my aversion.

When Emily is fourteen, she longs to go on to high school. Aunt Elizabeth agrees--but at a terrible cost. Emily must give up her "insane desire to write" except for school work. Emily cannot do this, but finally compromises. She may still write poetry but nothing that isn't actual truth. No more stories created in her fertile brain. The best she can do is jot down plot and character ideas and save until she finishes high school. It is like cutting out part of her heart to not write fiction, but there is no other way to get an education.

Although filled with excitement, humor, gossip, school doings, misunderstandings, persecution, friends and enemies, and at last romance, the books most vividly portray the struggles of a girl who will let nothing stand in the way of realizing her dream. Success comes years later but only after a kindly old man finds Emily's novel in the attic long after she stopped submitting it, He stuffs it in a cracker box and sends it to a publisher Emily never dared approach. He does not include return postage for fear that doing so will encourage them to reject his beloved Emily' book.

The publisher loves the book. Folks who formerly scoffed at the idea of an upstart thinking she could ever become an author does a complete turn around when the book proves a success.

A different way of life, a different era. Yet feelings and dreams of those who cannot quench the desire and feel compelled  to write remain the same. Thank you, Emily, for persisting.

 

 

Emily of New Moon books