Will You Give Up or Keep on Writing

It is a well known fact that people are usually told to never give up on themselves in life. It is one of the lessons parents always like to teach to their children. I continue to try and impart such wisdom on my kids daily. But, do we really put this into action in the real word? How many times have you been told that what you have done was not good enough just to leave it at that and walk away? How many times have you asked for a second chance? I am here to tell you that it is always worth asking for. I am here to tell you that those lessons we have been taught by our parents and that we in turn teach to our children are well worth the effort.

Keep Going. Never Stop.

In the distant past I held a few sales jobs. None of the jobs really led to anything special, but I gained valuable knowledge while working in that field. I am naturally an outgoing person so as a salesman I had that to my advantage. Although I was a good talker there is a lot more than just talking to people involved in sales. One of the main things that I learned, among many other things, was to never take no for an answer. Be resilient. Never give up.

I took that to heart. There is a well known statistic in the sales industry and it is used as a training tool.  
For every 20 "nos" you will get 1 "yes" on average anyway. This is true. It is also an example of why you need to keep going. Imagine a door-to-door salesman. Walking down the street, knocking on doors, attempting to sell his wares. He will have to knock on 20 doors before he gets one person interested or curious enough to welcome him in for a deeper explanation of his product. You must keep going.

I kept telling myself this while I was placing bid after bid on Elance. No matter how frustrated I got I just kept remembering my days in sales. I knew that if I persevered something would come out of it. Wouldn't you know it, it finally did. A couple weeks ago I got a hit on one of my bids and now I am working with the person consistently. It is not a big job, but it is a job. It is just what I was looking for. A win.

Getting a Second Chance

After working for about three weeks with the person I connected with on Elance, I got another opportunity. This time it seemed as if it was for a job that would offer consistency. This is what I have been looking for. A consistent job that at least for the most part I could count on. So I followed the instructions for the bid and placed my proposal. The reply came in and they requested that I send in a "test" article based on the keyword phrase they gave me. I figured, ok. No problem. I have done this plenty of times.

I wrote the article and sent it in. At this point I was excited. I was nervous. I really wanted this job to work out because of the promise of consistency. I got my hopes up too high. The next day I got a reply to the article that I had sent in and it said, "Sorry. This is not what we are looking for." I was crushed.

I had not put all my eggs into one basket so to speak, but instead all of my hopes.  If this was any other circumstance I think I would have just deleted the thread of messages and emails and just moved on. As if none of that had ever happened. That is the great thing about technology today. You can wipe out everything if you want to. So I took a couple hours and I thought about it. As it turned out, the reason my article was not "accepted" was because it went in the wrong direction. I had not paid enough attention to what they were looking for.

So I decided that I needed to follow my own school of thought on this one and keep going. So I emailed and explained my situation and how I misunderstood the meaning of the article and what they were looking for. I essentially asked for a second chance. It was granted.

So I re-wrote the article and I did so along the lines of what they were looking for. After submitting the revised work I got an email explaining that the second time around was much better and that I had the job! If I had not asked for a second chance or had I not decided to keep going and to not give up I would have moved on and would not have a new job that I start this coming Monday.

Believing in Yourself

It is cliche and a bit tacky to some to say that, "you must always believe in yourself". "You must never give up. Always fight on!" But you know what, it is true. It is all true.

Think about it. Who else are you going to put faith in if not yourself? This is especially true for writers. We all put ourselves out there with everything that we submit. Everything we write is a piece of us. Whether it is our byline or not, there is a piece of us in everything that we do. It is sorta like walking into a crowd naked and exposed.

That being the case, you must be proud of what you do. You must believe that what you have written is what you want it to be. If you cannot believe in your own work then you might as well not be in this profession. Writing can be an escape for some and for others it can be a sword that they wield with the power of the Gods. No matter which your writing is for you, if you do not believe in what you write and your ability to do so then you will never have the power to lift that sword.