Even in dark days, success is possible

To those in the publishing industry, bookselling is a profession. It's a way to put food on the table (or not these days) and fund an eventual retirement. To us, the authors, it is, and has to be a passion. There's no other reason we'd sit at a computer on a gorgeous afternoon when the rest of the world is having fun.

The passion is about the experience of seeing our work become something tangible, to have someone read our work and enjoy it. To have someone buy our book and consider the money well spent.

Meg Federico was the prototypical wannabe writer. She tried and often failed, pouring her soul through her keyboard for hours on work no one would see. When her mother had a stroke and her step-father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease, writing became her release, something she did at the airport while waiting to fly back and forth from her home in Nova Scotia to her mother's in New Jersey for two years.

Meg did what we're supposed to do, crafted those stories and made them more readable. Along the way, she had the same doubts all of us have. Eventually, she got an associate editor at Carolyn Swayze Agency on her side, the got signed by Carolyn Swayze. The pay-off moment came when she got a call telling her Random House was interested and asking how big an advance she wanted.

Welcome to the Departure Lounge: Adventures in Mothering Mother will be published next week. Read her entire story in the National Post.

Writer's Note
So much of the news in the publishing industry these days is bad. It's harder now. There's no budget for marketing. As authors, the deck is stacked against us. And yet here's a story of a woman who had all the same self-doubt as the rest of us and succeeded anyway. It's an important story because it could be our story. It could be your story. Write on.