Determination

Over eleven hours. One-hundred-eighty-three games. Two relentlessly determined athletes. One match the broke record after record. It was the longest match ever in hours, days & games, had the most aces ever recorded in a single match, and for me, the most admirable display of perseverance ever. Last week at Wimbledon, John Isner & Nicolas Mahut put in their bid to steal some of the limelight away from the World Cup action and write their own names in the sports history books.

A writer can learn a lot from a match like that. It was an eleven hours struggle spread out over three days (called on account of darkness twice, but never called off for the sheer exhaustion of the players). Each player had winners and missed opportunities. And every time they fell behind, they battled back to even ground - again, and again, and again.

Anna's suitcase story, of the author bringing hundreds of rejections to that RWA workshop, puts me in mind of this kind of struggle. Spread out over years and countless manuscripts, we submit and submit and submit. Contests, query letters, partials, fulls. There are ups and downs. Moments of validation and frustration. But we keep going. We believe in our ability to win and we push ourselves past the rough patches with nothing more than faith and hope.

And then, after all of that, hopefully one day we get here:

And it's all worth it.