Indeed, the great paradox of the writer’s life is how much time he spends alone trying to connect with other people. ~ Betsy Lerner, The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers

As a child, I remember being intensely withdrawn at times. I kept diaries, read voraciously, and invented imaginary characters. Through the pages of biographies and novels, I felt released to explore other worlds. My friends became Emily Dickinson, Louise May Alcott, Emily Bronte, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, among others. Their worlds enthralled me, and I yearned to write and connect in similar ways.

But writers spend the bulk of their time alone—struggling to make that all-important connection with the reader. Some give up. It’s hard to work without a certain amount of emotional support and financial backing. In my family of origin, writing was laughed at. And so I studied nursing, but years later returned to my first passion.

It’s like Betsy Lerner says, “But if you can’t give it up, if hearing how impossible the odds are only makes you dig in deeper, it doesn’t really matter if you’ve got natural talent. Your job is to marshal the talent you do have and find people who believe in your vision. What’s important, finally, is that you create, and that those creations define for you what matters most, that which cannot be extinguished even in the face of silence, solitude, and rejection.”

I balance all that with something Ethel Herr, author of An Introduction to Christian Writing has written:

We ought to keep His honor foremost. If His pleasure is our goal, His honor will be our prize. We will gladly accept whatever limitations He puts on our advancement and personal recognition, as long as He can be glorifed.

For me, this is what matters most.