Hello Reader,

We had a couple of unexpected adventures last week as our three-week road trip through the western states wrapped up. We woke up Wednesday morning after a really wonderful evening catching up with old friends in Salt Lake City to the news that our route for the next day was...on fire.

Most of the news coverage has been focused on the devastating fire in California, but things are pretty dire in eastern Oregon as well, which meant not only was I-84 closed, but our destination, Walla Walla, was smokey enough that our plan for a couple of days of wine tasting was not going to work.

As tempted as we were to stay in Salt Lake City to experience Pioneer Day, we headed north instead, figuring with the impending move an extra day of packing wouldn't go to waste. That put us in Missoula just in time for the kind of thunderstorm that had us backing away from the windows and huddling in our hotel room...until the power (and with it the air conditioning and the hot water and the coffee machine) went out.

Up until that point, we had the kind of trip that will linger in the memory banks for years to come. We reacquainted ourselves with Fort Collins, met up with old friends, found what will undoubtedly be a new favorite kayaking spot, and found a place to live (!!). Then spent a blissful week in beautiful Crested Butte for the annual Wildflower Festival. And I got to touch real dinosaur bones! How could things turn so quickly?

Once I found a place that actually had coffee the next morning, I started mulling over our change of plans, the long drive home from Missoula, the ruined Walla Walla plans, the horrors of the fires that continue to rage across the west, and I realized none of these things were within my control and I just had to roll with it. That small adjustment in attitude made all the difference and turned what could have been a sour end to our trip to something sweeter.

There's a lesson in here for writers, of course. Many things that happen when we attempt to send our stories out into the world for publication are beyond our control. It can even feel like we're cursed when the rejections and disappointments start to pile up one after the other. But if we can shift our perspective from the disappointment of the moment to the larger journey, it will help turn what could feel like a devastating setback to a mere bump in the road to be navigated and left behind in the rearview mirror.

This kind of mindset shift takes practice and I'm not suggesting that you bury your feelings of disappointment and grief--they will just come back to haunt you later if you do. Instead, I'm suggesting that you feel your feelings, acknowledge the disappointments that have come in, grieve for whatever length of time you need, then move forward, with a new story, another pitch, a new direction.

It's a lot easier to look in that rearview mirror and laugh about it when you're back on the path toward something fresh and exciting than it is to try to get that perspective when you're stuck in Missoula with no coffee, right?

Is Your Manuscript Ready to Pitch?

While I was traveling, AuthorsPublish ran an article I wrote on one of my favorite topics: Is Your Manuscript Ready to Pitch? If you followed the advice in the article and still aren't sure if you're ready, reach out--I'd love to chat with you about my method for objectively determining if your story is reader-ready so you can pitch with confidence when the time comes.

What I'm Reading

Any fellow dragon-lovers out there? Anyone else looking forward to the next installment of The Fourth Wing? Well, if you're looking for something to tide you over until January, I've got a trilogy for you: The Aurelian Cycle by Rosaria Munda. It's got a dragon academy, a doomed romance (less steamy, but perhaps even more emotionally satisfying), conspiracies and twists galore, and the kind of social commentary on class, revolution, and reform that made me fly through these books on my road trip. I can't wait for you to meet Annie, Lee, Delo, Griff, and the rest of Munda's amazing cast of characters.