Today I’m frantically trying to finish editing stories for our January 2011 issue (yes, we work this far in advance in the magazine world!) because I’m going to be out of the office all next week. I’ll be at lovely Wainwright House in Rye, New York, teaching at the Guideposts Writers Workshop, along with my fellow editors and bloggers Rick Hamlin, Colleen Hughes and Jim Hinch.
We’ll teach the 15 winners of our biannual writers workshop competition everything we know about telling true inspirational stories. As is often the case when you’re a teacher, we find ourselves learning from our students too.
I still remember something workshopper (that’s what we call the graduates of our weeklong workshop) Marion Bond West said some years back when we asked her to speak to our then-newest class. “I’m Guideposts’ most published writer,” she said. Then she added, “I’m also Guideposts’ most rejected writer.”
I’m Guideposts’ most published writer. I’m also Guideposts’ most rejected writer. To me, those two simple sentences made a profound statement about persistence and the power of positive thinking. So many of us would have felt beaten down by just one rejection, one failure. Not Marion. She kept believing in her dream of becoming a published writer and she kept trying. She kept thinking yes even when she was hearing no to submission after submission. If you recognize her name from the more than 60 stories of hers that have appeared in the pages of Guideposts (and in the blog she writes here with her daughter Julie), then you know she eventually got to yes.
Marion happened to be talking about writing, but her words apply to any goal, any dream. Sure, if you don’t try, you’ll never fail. But if you don’t try, you’ll never achieve anything either. Be like Marion and keep trying. Keep thinking yes.
