Hi everyone, Laura here!
Carrie Ann Golden won our April Challenge A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall with her stunning poem Tears in the Rain. Life is like tears in the rain.
Our judge Nick Wilford said, "There was not much to separate the two poems in the shortlist (Carrie Ann and Kalpana) because both carried so much resonance and emotional heft. But the beat and the rhythm in Carrie Ann's poem certainly made a mark, reflecting the darkest of times and somehow offering a note of hope."
Today Carrie Ann shares with us the importance of persistence in the face of any obstacles!
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Don’t Give Up!
Ever feel like your writing isn’t good enough?
At some point, every writer will have felt this way.
Even the most successful authors have experienced these
painful insecurities.
“I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘uh oh,
they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going
to find me out.” – Maya Angelou
“Even after making the bestseller lists so many times, I
feel like I'm a fraud and that this time everyone will find out.” - Sandra
Brown (author of sixty-eight New York Times bestsellers)
“Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction can be a
difficult, lonely job; it’s like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub.
There’s plenty of opportunity for self-doubt.” – Stephen King
Writers are notorious for comparing themselves to other
“more successful” writers.
I’ll never sell that many books.
I’ll never be a published author.
I’ll never be able to write like (insert your favorite
author).
Guess what?
I have the same affliction!
Being a deaf-blind writer, I’ve faced numerous challenges –
and there’ve been many days when I nearly gave up.
Why?
I believed I would never ever be good enough.
I mean, how can someone like me with limited vision and
hearing ever write well?
When I was a girl, people struggled to relate to me (because
of my disability) so I created imaginary friends – our escapades usually got me into trouble; I
even landed in an ER once!
I discovered writing by accident (through a sixth-grade
classmate’s challenge on who could write the scariest story) – which became a
much safer way of interacting with my “friends.”
College English Composition nearly cured me of my passion
when the professor declared that I was incapable of writing anything
meaningful.
Ten years passed before I tried again (through the
encouragement of my husband and a co-worker who was also a writer). When I
published my first short story, the editor exclaimed as to how readable the
story was.
Over the years, I learned that I didn’t need all my
senses to be a good writer.
I discovered my own style of writing that became a part of
my writer’s voice; for example, instead
of relying heavily on descriptions, I focused on words that evoked emotions.
So, what one would deem as weakness we can turn into our
greatest strength - and the only way to accomplish that is to never give up on
the writer within.
“I seek strength, not to be greater than others, but to fight my greatest enemy, the doubts within myself” – P.C. Cast
Carrie Ann Golden is from the mystical Adirondack Mountains now living on a farmstead in the Red River Valley of North Dakota (USA). She writes dark fiction and poetry. A Deafblind, her work has been published in places such as GFT Press, Doll Hospital Journal, The Hungry Chimera, Asylum Ink, Piker Press, Edify Fiction, and others. You can find her on her writing blog as well as Medium and Twitter.
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Thank you so much Carrie Ann for your heartfelt post, and congratulations once again for your winning poem!
We'd love for you to tweet this post or share it to Facebook or your favorite social media site.
#WEP A HARD RAIN'S GONNA FALL #WEPwinner #guestpost https://writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com/2022/05/wep-april-challenge-winner-carrie-ann.html @DeniseCCovey, @YolandaRenee, @LGKeltner, @OlgaGodim @jemifraser #amwriting #writingchallenge
#WEP A HARD RAIN'S GONNA FALL #WEPwinner #TearsInTheRain #guestpost https://writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com/2022/05/wep-april-challenge-winner-carrie-ann.html @DeniseCCovey, @YolandaRenee, @LGKeltner, @OlgaGodim @jemifraser #amwriting #writingchallenge
Our next challenge will be here before we know it! We hope many of you will consider joining us for our June Challenge: Please Read the Letter.