Graveyard Shifts, Dreams and the #6...horror story or another success story?

Toni, in an awesome, very inspiring post wrote: ' Sometimes you have to find your own motivation'. (Click here to view her post.)

And it got me thinking... what really motivates me to write? It's something I've always dreamed about since I can't remember... so forever.  I've always wanted to be an author. I started drafting and outlining stories as soon as I could write (and I've kept those little scribbles too). But lately, life's kinda gotten in the way and laundry has trumped the writing. Screaming kids have demanded more attention than my keyboard, computer and writing dreams. Hmmff..

I came across the success story of Brandon Sanderson who was chosen to continue Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series (phenomenal series by the way!) after Mr. Jordan passed away. Mr Jordan left copious notes for his remaining books and Brandon Sanderson was chosen to continue his work. Brandon Sanderson struggling student to six time New York Times Best Selling Author journey is a classic one. AND we always LOVE to hear these kind of successes!

Brandon started writing behind a hotel front desk during the graveyard shift. He worked midnight to 5am giving him many quiet hours to just write. His first goal was just to write 6 books. Why 6 you ask? I took his reasoning and story from BYU Magazine article written by Krista Holmes Hanby:

“I once heard that your first five books are generally bad, and so I determined I would write six at the very least.”

He did go on to write eight books during his five year graveyard stint. His sixth book was Elantris and sat on an editor's desk before it was rejected.

Again and again Sanderson was told that his books would never sell because they were too long or too moral. But he was determined. “At the end of the day if you told me, ‘You will never get published,’ I would have still written the books,” he says.

He persevered and now:
Little did the haggard student know then that in a mere eight years, he would publish not only Elantris (in 2005) but 12 more novels, including his acclaimed Mistborn series and the middle-grade Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians series—as well as the final three books of The Wheel of Time, by epic-fantasy writer Robert Jordan.

Brandon also gives this advice to fellow writers:

“There are a lot of writers who are better than I am who are not successful,” he says. “It’s a measure of luck, perseverance, and providence.”

And how to deal with writer's block:

“Sit in a chair and write,” Sanderson says.“Ignore this thing they call writer’s block. Doctors don’t get doctor’s block; your mechanic doesn’t get mechanic’s block. If you want to write great stories, learn to write when you don’t feel like it. You have to write it poorly before you can write it well. So just be willing to write bad stories in order to learn to become better.”

I love to hear of triumph through hard work and NEVER giving up. I did a lot of cutting and pasting from the article and I recommend reading it in it's entirety. Please click here.  Very good read and guaranteed to give you that get up and go with renewed determination!

So what's my motivation? I'm going to write another book. I've written 5 books which have been rejected a million times. Well, it really seems like that many. But, this next one could just be the one! The one that gets me published! The one that makes my dreams come true. I just gotta keep going! And so should YOU!!!