Motivation...

What gets me going? I can identify two powerful motivators. First, a really good idea gets me going. It may be good enough to power me through a complete draft. Second: jealousy. Someone else's success. When I was writing Stone House Diaries (that is, during that decade), the novel City of Light by Lauren Belfer was published. Now, Lauren appeared to get what I'd been dreaming of. She got a big publishing company behind her novel about Buffalo, she had an agent, she was feted locally (she's not from Buffalo, she just went to school there. She lives, doncha know, in NYC). Me? My book was published by an unknown indie publisher, I have no agent and I got minimal attention locally. So, as I said, jealousy is a motivator.

And I know this isn't just me, as a good friend of mine who writes just emailed me about her own jealousy over the success of someone half her (our) age. Yep, it cuts like a knife. Is it enough to make us abandon writing? I wish.

We may start out in this field acknowledging the dismal statistics against success, conceding as we devote our time to writing and rewriting that we won't have the commercial success we want. We think we've prepared ourselves. Then someone does just that - younger than you, wildly successful. And it never helps if you pick up their book and read a few pages and are left... unimpressed.