Striving valiantly

Still reflecting on the Craft & Publishing Voyage. 

I wrote about my experience the other week, and I’ve been reading some of the participants’ reflections as they post about it. I thought you might like to see what the QM2 and/or the writing adventure was like through their eyes.

Here’s Margo Warren, who shared a very funny piece on the letter N during the student readings: 

• https://margoonthego.blogspot.com/2024/05/crossing-seas-and-dotting-is.html?m=1

And Elinor Florence, bestselling historical fiction author:

• https://www.elinorflorence.com/blog/queen-mary-2/ 

And Debby Mayer, memoirist and novelist:

• The Bests: https://travelswithsizzle.substack.com/p/travels-with-sizzle-c1d 

• The Worsts: https://travelswithsizzle.substack.com/p/travels-with-sizzle-77d

These writers are both aspiring and published – and aspiring again. I am reminded that writing, though a solitary pursuit, doesn’t need to be lonely. And in fact, writing benefits from human connection and from professional feedback. I’m humbled by how we are all connected in our striving.

Which reminds me of one of my favorite quotations:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

―Theodore Roosevelt

Strive on!