It's a Party: Manuscript in Motion Mondays!

So, as you all know, I got my first rejection this month. That rejection inspired this post, which in turn inspired something I'm calling Manuscript in Motion Mondays. Read on and I'll explain.

I read this quotation the other day and I thought, “That’s a good question. What would I do if I knew I could not fail?” The answer was obvious: I would be a published author.

Then I thought, “Well how do I know I will fail unless I try?” and “Why can’t I be a published author?” The answer?

Yep. That’s why.

Writing and getting published is hard. It’s time-consuming. It’s not always fun. Sometimes it downright sucks. (Can I say ‘sucks’ on here? Well, I am ‘cause it does.)

Which is the reason this is so true:

I firmly believe that the biggest thing standing between me and my dream of becoming a published author is myself.

After contemplating these quotations this week, I decided I needed to do this:

What does that mean for me? It means I need to stop acting like a stay-at-home mom who has a pipe dream of someday becoming a published author and start living the life of a published author and doing the things published authors do.

What do published authors do? They write! Consistently. Not just think about writing, not just daydream about seeing their future bestsellers on bookshelves but they roll up their sleeves, put on those overalls and get to work. Turns out I can’t be a published author unless I write a book first. Duh, right?

Which brings me to Manuscript in Motion Mondays. If you're like most want-to-be-published writers, you have at least one manuscript, maybe the beginnings of more, and they're lurking on your computer. You know they're there, but maybe you've pushed them aside, convinced you don't have the time/talent/patience/etc. to finish them.

Recently, my WIP, a YA novel, had become something of a monster under my bed. I had pushed it aside, and the longer I stayed away from it, the scarier it became (I don’t look good in overalls). I had convinced myself that I couldn’t work on it anymore because it was too hard. Big, scary monster under there. Yikes. Well, this week I took a big deep breath and put on my brave face and crawled under the bed in search of that monster.

Turns out he wasn’t so scary. He was like a cute little furry guy. In fact, I took him out and gave him a little hug. I realized my WIP was just fine- the problem was ME! I jumped right back in and started clicking away and pounded out another 1000 words in less than an hour (during my son’s gymnastics class, actually).

It felt AMAZING! I felt like an author, overalls and all. I think it's time we all became friends with our little monster manuscripts, and so I am creating Manuscript in Motion Mondays!

Here's the deal: Each week we're going to have something of a writers group therapy session here at Mormon Mommy Writers.

- Each Monday I will post a topic of conversation or a writing challenge, and you, as readers and fellow authors and bloggers can write your own post about it on your own blog.

- Then, come back here and grab a button from the top of the right sidebar. Copy and paste the html code into the html for your post so your readers will know you're participating in Manuscript in Motion @ Mormon Mommy Writers.

- Come back here and add a link to your post using our Mr. Linky tool so that we and the others participating can check out your Manuscript in Motion Mondays post on your blog.

- Each week I will read through the links and choose one participant whose post was particularly inspiring, funny, insightful or interesting and share all or part of their post in my Manuscript in Motion Mondays post the following week.

Fun, right? I think so! This is also a great way to get your blog out there- all of our readers will see your link and you may get some new followers out of the deal (I know I always do when I participate in blog parties with my Beautiful Thrifty Life blog).

So, now that this post is in itself nearly the length of a manuscript, here's your challenge for this week:

Take out your little monster under the bed- that manuscript that you keep seeing on your computer whenever you're looking for other files and you keep thinking you should get back to but the very thought of it makes you cringe- and pull it out. Write a sentence. Edit a sentence. Do SOMETHING with it! Then write a post about it- how it felt to work on it again, share an excerpt, brag about your word count, whatever! Just drag that little monster out and tell us about it.

*Note: I used a link to my other blog as a test for this post and now I don't know how to get rid of it. Just ignore that. ;-)