Champagne Moments

by Jennifer Young

Image by BerndtF, public domain 

Less than a year ago, things weren’t looking good on the writing front. Wait; that’s an understatement. Things were looking pretty damn desperate.

I was struggling to write anything at all. Then I’d have a great idea and set to, yet somehow between my head and the page those sparkling phrases lost lustre and appeared in front of me in different shades of grey (but not, alas, fifty of them).

Years ago I took on board the eternal writers’ advice: never give up. I clung to it in my struggle. I sent things out. They came back. I sent them out again, over and over, until the game changed when I received a damning crit for a piece of work that I’m still deeply attached to. Heroine? A spoilt princess. Hero? Who’d want to read about him? Villainess, motivated by unjust hatred for our heroine? I can quite see where she’s coming from. Most damning of all, I was advised to go and find someone who actually knew about writing to read my work before putting it out to anyone else; I might learn something. How my writing buddies, Jenny and Dianne, must have laughed at that one!

After that I lost my motivation. I wrote…nothing. On the rare occasions when those sparking phrases popped into my head, they came with the ball and chain of that phrase; who’d want to read that? In short, I gave up.

My last piece of work was still out there, clinging on in cyberspace with two publishers. inevitably, the next thing that came in was a rejection. But it was a rave rejection. It told me all the things they liked about it. That didn’t hurt quite so much but I still knew that I was never going to put anything else out, ever again. Then, in late July, came the email. They liked it. They wanted to publish it. I went away on holiday to think about it and I came back believing. (And, incidentally, with a host of fresh ideas.) I decided to accept.

A couple of weeks after that I was on my way to meet friends for lunch. Outside the venue I stopped for a second to check my emails - and there it was, the final confirmation that my novel was to be published. In four months I’d gone from nowhere to somewhere. Six months further on, the book’s out and there’s no stopping me writing.

Fittingly, the friends I was meeting were all writers and we were meeting not just for lunch but to drink champagne. Believe, that’s my advice. Oh, and find some writer friends. And, most importantly of all, drink champagne with them on the day your dream comes true.


Thank You For The Music is published by Tirgearr Publishing.