I keep thinking of people I met along the way who were incredibly talented.

They could tap into a child’s perspective with ease, writing from an innocent yet knowing angle that never talked down to the child reader. They could express a child’s deepest concerns in a beautiful way that was accessible to the child and adult who had once been a child.

But they lacked the ability to take rejection, and so they eventually fizzled. They went back to their day jobs and grew a little bitter thinking that the world didn’t understand them.

No, it was because their brilliance was raw.

There was something there but they hadn’t refined it yet. They hadn’t smoothed the rough edges off the concepts they were trying to convey so that the end result was just a titch clumsy.

Instead of persevering, learning the skills that they lacked, they gave up.

I’m particularly I’m thinking of this person I met who was extremely funny! Her pitches were to die for, but…her writing was weak. It was clunky, flabby. It needed judicious editing. Pretty much all manuscripts get edited but if you’ve got too many rookie mistakes, the editor or agent can’t get past them and they’ll just put it to the side.

In this day and age there is way too much competition for diminishing returns, so it happens a lot.

And I keep thinking of the people I’ve met more recently whose own emotional baggage seems to get in their way.

Recently, on Netflix I watched a fascinating documentary on Toni Morrison. I had bought one of her books a long time ago as part of Oprah’s book club or something, called Paradise. Maybe it’s not her best or something, but when I started reading it, I found my mind confused. She kind of repeated herself and I had to go back and reread the passage.

Then I remember a quote from the documentary. Oprah had said the same thing to her. She said that she often got confused and had to go back and reread what she’d just read. And Toni answered, “That’s called reading.”

It sounded incredibly pretentious to me. The kind of answer that a fixture in the upper echelons of LITERATURE would say. Give me a break.

That is not good writing.

Good writing is simple writing. Simple but deep, and that is incredibly hard to achieve.

Never should you confuse the reader in terms of what you just said.

Now much of Toni Morrison’s language was quite lyrical and beautiful, don’t get me wrong, there were things to admire, but the fact that I constantly have to go back and reread passages is darn frustrating. Some readers will put up with it, but I’m afraid I have a hard time.

I’m sure she’s leading up to something worthwhile she’s trying to say but darn if she didn’t sprinkle a whole bunch of tacks along her literary path so that it makes the journey harder.

And I don’t think you ever want to make the journey harder.

The biggest problem I have with the literati is that they think obfuscation makes the work deeper.

Nah. I don’t buy that.

Authors like Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and Mark Twain were successful because they did not rely on obfuscation, but rather character to tell their stories.

Well what happened after I made a critical statement about Toni Morrison’s writing online was that I ended up offending another author who really looks up to her.

And my criticism was seen as racist.

It made me sad.

To think this person saw me as racist just because I dared criticize someone who admired and aspired to.

Up till then I’d really respected this person, but that kind of defensiveness is hard to defend. And I realized I’d better keep my distance. I might be wrong but with my experience in the field and seeing talent come and go, I find it hard to believe such a person can have the thickness of hide required to succeed in this business.

Thin-skins don’t cut it.

As an author you will be criticized from every angle, you can’t assume that the person doing the criticizing is being racist. Sure, sometimes they are, but not always.

And in my case, definitely not. I was trying very hard to like Toni Morrison’s writing.

Whenever this kind of thing happens though, I retreat and examine what I can learn from it. I question, am I projecting in any way? Am I guilty of being prickly and defensive too?

And I try to be as honest as possible because I have found it’s the best way forward.

Oh…and perseverance. You need oodles of perseverance if you want to make it, and I still feel like, after 20+ years as a published author, I’m still only getting started on all the things I want to say!