“No matter who you are, no matter what you did, no matter where you’ve come from, you can always change, become a better version of yourself.”
~Madonna
This week I have actually been really productive, or at least more productive then I’ve been in a really long time. I am starting to feel that drive again to get what I need done no matter what. I heard a celebrity say once that those three words were words that drove her to the level of success that she had reached. She said that if she always told herself ‘no matter what’ the job or task had to get done then she would be driven to do it. It may not be done perfectly or maybe not even in its entirety, but it will get done. I’ve been thinking a lot about those three words and this week that is what I have had in my mind. Instead of trying to make everything perfect and get every single thing done, I have just been content on getting whatever I could get done, no matter what.
I was talking to Ms. L. last night and I told her about the submission that I finally sent off to a magazine. It sounds like something that you would think I had been doing on a regular basis by this point but sadly it was not. I have spent months agonizing over whether editors will like my article ideas, whether my writing was really as good as I thought it was that they would even pay attention to a query from me, but mostly I had been trying to figure out how to write the PERFECT query letter. I have stacks and stacks of books (and internet research) on how to write a perfect (or irresistible) query but none of them seemed to help me. I had sworn that I would not send out a query until I got the query letters just right. The problem with that theory was that none of my query letters were coming out perfectly, so of course nothing was being sent off.
This week I said that I was just going to start sending query letters, even if they weren’t perfect, even if they weren’t even close to being right, because if I don’t send anything out then obviously no one will see my work and I will never see my byline in any national magazine. So I did. I sent a submission, and it was indeed imperfect, but it also indeed felt really good. The thing is that I can’t promise that the queries will be perfect, but I imagine that with more practice in sending them out on a more consistent basis, they will get better.
I also told Ms. L. that I was going to work on my latest novel that I have yet to finish because I honestly haven’t touched it since the end of National Novel Writing Month (I’m not sure why I haven’t). I said that even if I didn’t write much on it that I would at least work on it for half an hour, no matter what. I in fact did work on my novel, and though I did not write much on it, I did write for a half an hour. I plan on working on it tonight as well.
I am finding that this week is turning out to do for me exactly what I wanted it to do for me (at least on the writing level) which is re-light that fire under me to get moving and put all my plans in motion. I think now that I have really started to visualize my dreams I can begin to see them as my reality. It’s helping me put some action into all of the planning that I have been doing. It feels really good to feel that fire starting to burn again. I just hope it doesn’t go out again anytime soon. I’ve got too much lost time to make up for. But I will get the job done, No Matter What!
Jimmetta Carpenter
Writer/Editor
The Diary: Succession of Lies (Now Available)
Writing as “Jaycee Durant”
http://unpleasantlyplump.wordpress.com/
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jimmetta-Carpenter/1069480310
Write 2 Be 