Encouragement for Today and Tomorrow

“Correction does much, but encouragement does more.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A few years ago, I was blessed to go to a writer’s retreat in California. After the retreat was over, my husband I took the 27 Mile Drive along the coastline between Monterey and Carmel. Along the route we stopped to see this tree out on that rocky point. It was one of the highlights on the drive pointed out in the brochure we had about the drive.

According to the brochure, the tree had survived on that rocky point for over two hundred and fifty years despite the storms that blew in off the ocean and the winds that tossed restless waves up on the rocks. Because it had become admired for its lone stand, the people in the area built a stone wall around its base to protect it from the sea. They were ready to do whatever they could to encourage it to continue to cling to its lonely and perhaps at times brutal outpost and give all of us a reason to stop, admire it, and be encouraged by the sight of one tree keeping its lone vigil.

I don’t know whether the tree still stands on that rocky point. It has been over fourteen years since I was there, but what is fourteen years compared to more than two hundred and fifty? But just the memory of seeing the tree brings encouragement to mind.

Everybody needs encouragement in his or her life. For sure, writers do. Sometimes we’re like that lonely cypress tree out there on the point all by ourselves being buffeted by the winds of criticism and the waves of change in the publishing industry. We sit in front of our computers and write our stories and hope we’ll be able to hang on in the face of whatever storms blow our way. Perhaps personal storms that steal our writing time. Or professional storms that set our stories adrift in a sea of no interest. Or emotional storms of discouragement.

I started writing in a journal when I was a young teen. I was writing stories even then but the dream of writing anything someone else would want to read was no more than a glimmer of hope. But when I started seriously writing and pursuing publication, my journal became my way of keeping a record of my hopes and dreams for my writing. But it was also the place where I could write about my frustrations and disappointments on my writing road. The road to publication can be hard and long with plenty of potholes.

I can open those notebooks up to some years when I was writing without much or any publishing success and see some storms of rejections and dismay on most any page. For example, on a Tuesday in 1997 this is a bit of what I wrote in my journal. “I’ve been putting off writing here because things are so flat, so depressing. I got a rejection on Freak of the Week finally – only took them 9 months this time to decide the story wasn’t right for them. … I’m so low I could crawl under a snake.”

Yikes, that sounds awful, doesn’t it? But even when I was lowest I always did my best to end my journal entry with a positive thought. That day I ended with “Courage! Willpower! Discipline!” Sometimes you have to be your own cheerleader, your own encourager. And years later, I ended up publishing that middle reader book, Freak of the Week.

At the Writer’s Retreat those years ago, one of the speakers, an editor for a well known publishing company, made a point of telling us all to be encouraged. He said the book industry still wanted to publish  great books. He assured us readers still wanted books that entertained and enlightened them.

Since that year when I was encouraged at a gathering of authors and then by seeing a tree surviving the winds and storms through centuries, I have added sixteen or seventeen books to my shelf of books I’ve written. And now I still sit in front of my computer, fingers on the keyboard and hope to find words to share yet another story with readers.

I first wrote about this tree clinging to its place by the ocean here on One Writer’s Journal in 2010. At the time, I wondered if anyone would read those words about being encouraged. But through the years since, I have been encouraged so often by your comments here. Thank you for being such an encouragement to me. I’ve needed it so often as I tried to write that next story the way I am doing now. You all are the best.

May you be encouraged as well in whatever hopes and dreams you have.

“I am not afraid of tomorrow for I have seen yesterday and I love today.” (William Allen White)

What encourages you in your day to day living?