The relentless pursuit of average

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This isn’t a cry to have people pet my ego, first of all.  I think that’s the most important thing to note here, lol.  So lately I’ve been having kind of an odd experience with writing.  Well, not with writing so much as it is the end result of my writing.  I’ve been getting rejections that are personalized and complimentary.  We liked it.  But the message underneath is, “We liked it, but we didn’t like it enough to publish it.”  And I’ve been getting things like third place in contests.  “It’s better than other things, but not quite good enough.”

I feel like I’m now in this weird place where I’m better than a lot of other people, closer to being published than I’ve ever been before, but still too average.  Have you ever felt that way before?  I don’t like being average.   I’ve been told I’m better than that for years but now I sort of feel like I’m on that mid-list area of waiting to publish.

So what do you do with this time?  I know I’ll get published eventually and I honestly think that any skills I get now will come from just more writing.  So what do I do with this, “You’re good but not good enough” time in my life?  Write more.  I’ve got a good eight finished novels already that I don’t know what to do with.  Of, course, I will keep writing.  It’s what I do.  But how do you break out of the relentless pursuit of average?

AJ

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