Encouraging(?) Thoughts

Things they tell you at writer’s conferences to encourage you (or at least make you realize that you have to be half crazy and incredibly persistent to actually want to be a writer):

• Most novels sell fewer than 1,000 copies. (This is novels written by well known people, not just first novels by unknown folks.) (This thought makes me think of this.)
• Some of those well known people worked actively for more than 11 years to get their first book published. (My take away from that is that if you wait long enough, someone else who’s writing in your genre will die of old age and open up a new spot.)(Kidding about the take away.)(Mostly.)
• Somewhere around 70% of what is requested by agents and editors at a writing conference is never actually submitted. (Really? Who does this?! Why would you do that?)

There were, in fact, many otheractually encouraging thoughts shared, but I wrote those down in notes so I can share them another day. These are the ones that I’ve been saving in my brain under the “Remember to blog those” categories.