How did it start? Maybe a teacher declared you to be a good writer. Maybe a parent encouraged. You entertained your friends with well-told jokes. Your vocabulary was somehow better than theirs. You loved reading. Without really knowing it, you absorbed the rules of basic grammar.
You wrote something. A poem, maybe. Then a few poems. A story. A bad story, probably. But it wasn’t all bad.
You were on a path. You realized this. That’s what mattered. Being on the path, moving forward, was enough for now. Two hundred, 300 words at a time. 500! 1,000!
But then the question arises: Shall I try to put this work out into the world? Try to get something published?
Something has changed.
You’ve encountered your first crossroad.
If you’re serious about writing, it won’t be your last. It will, in fact, be merely the first of innumerable crossroads, by turns challenging, confusing, frustrating, compelling, glorious, and back to challenging again.
Aft er writing 10 novels, numerous other works of fiction and nonfiction, and been published by major and minor houses as well as independently, I’ve encountered just about every writing-life crossroad there is. I’ve switched genres, written for magazines, taught writing, gone through dry spells, taken on freelance editing and consulting, kept on writing, the whole cheeseburger.
Every crossroad amounts to one thing: a decision. When you understand that key fact, you’re already in control, not that that makes any of this easy. Here’s how to recognize crossroads, deal with
