When I made the pitch for my historical fiction series, A Tale of Two Colors, first of all, I didn’t know I was making a pitch. Second, besides the promise of a contract afterwards, I left having learned two important things a publisher looks for in a writer.
In that initial meeting, the publisher simply said, “Tell me about your writing.”
I said I’d been writing for a couple of years, but as I shared the story I’d been writing, I traveled into the mystical world of living the story in the moment like I often do when I write. My senses experienced what my character was living as I shared the tale.
When I came back to myself, he asked, “How many words have you written?”
“Six hundred and eighty thousand words.”
“Say what?”
“Yeah, but I’ve broken it down into three parts.”
He laughed. “I want to talk to you about a contract, if you’re interested.”
I didn’t know what to say. I’d never spoken with a publisher before. I asked, “What makes you want to offer me a contract?”
He smiled. “It isn’t how many words you’ve written, because you certainly have the “chops” to finish a book. And it isn’t what you said that won me over. It’s what I heard in your voice that sold me.”
“What’s that?”
“Passion.”
Oxford Languages Dictionary defines passion as a “strong and barely controllable emotion… an intense desire or enthusiasm for something.” That something for me is writing. It’s an intense feeling bordering insanity, an insatiable burning drive within that causes me to pursue writing as I do. But it’s not just a strong feeling or drive. It requires effort, time, commitment, and perseverance to finish a short story, complete a poem, or continue a novel when it seems all is against your need to write.
Passion is what revives the listlessness we often experience when life’s changing weather interrupts your time to write, when inspiration begins to wane, when depression sets in… and the list goes on.
So, like a crop to be planted in a field, passion has to be cultivated.
Passion needs to be nourished and protected like a crop in a field needs water, fertilizer, and weed, pest, and disease control. Here are a few aspects of crop cultivation that might inform us on how to manage our passion and keep our writing spirits in good shape:
Good land is needed to produce a good crop—dedicate a special place for writing that allows passion to bloom and not be disturbed.
Soil preparation—till your passion soil with positive thoughts, strength of good health, and discipline against distraction.
Seed selection—write in your best genre but also rotate genre crops to expand and vary your yield, keeping your passion soil fresh.
Planting—when a writing idea is planted within the soil of your soul, allow time for the spark of passion to ignite the germinating fire within the sprout that begins growth of your work.
Irrigation and Fertilization—feed your passion with research, reading within your genre, listening to stories, sharing personal life experiences, and noting your surroundings, all of which figure into good writing.
Weed, disease, and pest control—protect your passion from distractions that drain your creativity, such as, weeds of unnecessary drama and conversation, irrelevant pests of social media and TV, and disease of unhealthy bodily care, all of which work against the passion needed for a bumper crop of success in your writing.
Harvesting— sift “the wheat from the tares” through revision and good editing to get the purest crop in the harvest of a completed work.
Post-harvesting handling—enjoy the passion satiating experience of a crop matured as you bring it to completion and getting your work published.
Celebrating—passion rekindled when your soul’s barn is filled with a completed work prepares the soil for the next crop in the waiting.
These are just a few ideas drawn from the world of farming that hopefully will help keep your passion fresh and on fire for your writing.
- Passion: A Field to be Cultivated - March 10, 2025
- Just Keep Writing - May 20, 2024
- Wow That Short Story Contest Judge! - October 9, 2023
