The "Suc" in Success

My Writing Cemetery

I didn't realize how much time I would need to grieve the death of what I thought was going to be my debut novel. It is now buried in the cemetery of my past projects, my closet, awaiting a potential Frankenstein resurrection should my new project land the coveted "Debut" title.

I faltered hard in my writing career.

Having rejection after rejection on An Uncharted Destiny broke my heart in ways I did not anticipate. I never considered I'd be one of those rejected. Don't we all expect to be that unicorn that lands the massive book deal after 15-30 rejections? With so much positive feedback, I assumed I just needed time. I did the mantra thing. I did the positive thinking thing.

It didn't happen.

When I started to give up hope, my therapist and I started a different tactic. We came up with the statement, "The book is the way it's supposed to be, regardless of if it sells." It helped me believe I could still call myself an author. It helped me land two published short stories.

But I still grieved.

And then I received two rejections on my short stories. Something I'd never received before. Short stories I had on lock! No such thing, especially in this industry. I wanted to bury myself in my cemetery closet.

I took time; delved into other aspects of myself. Wasted a lot of time on various socials. It was there I found a "Bookish Bootcamp." In it, we were challenged to attempt to build four habits, and for the first time since I crossed that rejection "give up" finish line, I was excited to pick up my pen. I joined a new Discord server, one with around 100 members who share the same goals as me: writing and living the dream.

My goals were simple:

*Write 1500 words a day.

*Study 1 chapter of Wonderbook.

*Finish reading a novel.

*Move for ten minutes a day after my writing sprints.

Except, when has a goal ever been simple?

A week in, I decided I needed to tweak things. My goal of writing 1500 new words a day didn't work, because I needed to figure out a lot of the muddie middle of my newest project, so I was spending 9 hours writing to achieve my goal and neglecting my mother, wife, house, daughter duties. I shifted it to at least 2 writing sprints a day. Which, again, I thought would be easy.

And it was! My "move ten minutes" goal worked out fantastic, was the tiny little push for my body to get excited about movement. My sprints worked well. I finished my fictional novels, and got halfway through my study.

Life was perfect! Which is always when it goes wrong.

Five years ago, we got a faulty installation on a new air conditioner / furnace. Of course, we didn't realize that then. It culminated in some catastrophic failure between week 2 and 3 of my four-week bootcamp. I'll spare you details, but let's just say flooding your house, ducts, and brand-new carpet isn't fun.

But I learned things about myself in these moments. 1) Ten minutes of movement helps me breathe. My head quieted when I swam. 2) As stressful as it is, leaning into gratitude has helped me laugh through it. We're still eating; we're all healthy. 3) Things are things. What we lost was only money. Just the opportunity of things we had planned on doing with that money. 4) I am a put my head down and push through things kind of person. When I feel out of control, I look for control in other areas to prove that I can still. My closets are so clean and orderly! 5) I remembered "Practice Makes Progress" and 6) I found another socials video about building habits. This one said something along the lines of "The fastest way to succeed is to show up and suck."

And that is shifting my habits.

We can have a 'suc'cessful habit days.

I can show up for myself by turning on my switch to dance and hating it and half-assing it and get 2 stars on my dance, and still have succeeded.

I can get in the pool and literally float for ten minutes, but I showed up, so I succeeded.

I can sit at my desk for a writing sprint and write three words, and suck it up so bad—but succeed, because I showed up.

Sometimes we fall into society's pressure that we have to give it all. We have to give 100%. We have to operate at top efficiency, or we fail. But life isn't a black or white, win-or-lose scenario.

So, if you're drowning in that "I just can't" give yourself grace, and don't be afraid to "suc"ceed.

PS: If you're curious, in July I wrote 22,006 words. I did 51:58 hours of writing and 61 sprints.