Doing the impossible

Every Wednesday of this year, when not interrupted by rugby matches or skiing trips or a million appointments, I've been writing. Pretty steadily, ideas that have been in my head have gone down on paper and have turned into a sort of logical, hopefully coherent collection of sentences and chapters. Some have come easier than others. Some have been floating around my mind for years, others have been spur of the moment creations.

My dream is that this group of thoughts could turn into a book that has the potential to be published. It's been my dream for a long time. It is my dream that writing about my experiences, writing about what I've learned could help other people who are feeling the same things, or at least let them know they're not the only ones.

Lately, as the potential book has started to take more shape, I've been looking around at options of things to do with it when it's finished. And there is little that is more discouraging...

For a first time author with no major selling points (i.e. I'm not the president of the USA or an All Black), it's notoriously difficult to get published. It took JK Rowling 9 rejections before she got published. Margaret Mitchell got rejected 38 times before Gone With The Wind was accepted. And Chicken Soup For the Soul made it on it's 141st attempt! Maybe those figures should encourage me, maybe they will when the rejections start coming, but right now, they just make me think about what an uphill battle it is. This is what I've learned - most publishers don't even look at manuscripts that haven't come through an agent. Most agents, well, they aren't in New Zealand. Most overseas agents won't look at manuscripts from overseas authors.

I've tried to tell myself that if this is something God wants me to do, the barriers don't matter. Lately, it's much easier to wonder if I'm just kidding myself. And well, maybe I am, but I don't think I'm ready to give up just yet, so I've been trawling the internet for some unlikely victories and successes...

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield i.e. the makers of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, started by taking a correspondence course in ice cream making. They used their savings and a loan to set up a small shop and well, look at where they are now (mmmmm cookie dough ice cream)

Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first job because she was "unfit for TV".

Albert Einstein didn't speak till he was 7 years old and his teachers said he was "mentally slow".

In the Bible, Joseph was abused by his brothers, sold to Egyptians as a slave, a foreigner, got thrown into jail and ended up second in command to Pharaoh.

Impossible dreams. Success from failure. Trying again after rejection. It's hard to hold on, hard to believe, but what if I didn't? What if you didn't? What if, every time someone told you that it was impossible, you gave up?

Well, to start, we wouldn't have Ben and Jerry's Phish Food ice cream or Harry Potter...