Stubbornness

Stubborn

1 unreasonably or perversely unyielding : mulish

2 justifiably unyielding : resolute

I am a published writer because I am stubborn.

Stubbornly, I kept at it, before work, after work, hours spent at the computer (and earlier IBM Selectric).

Stubborn because I took courses, attended conferences and workshops to polish my craft

Stubborn because I joined a writers' circle, which gave me hope.

Stubborn because I kept submitting stories to contests and every now and then I won one. It gave me hope. Then I had a story read on BBC radio giving me more hope. It rewarded stubborn.

I remember reading Jim Davis, cartoonist of Garfield saying to aspiring cartoonists. Don't give up. What if you're rejected 17 times and you give up, but the 18th would have been a yes and you'd have missed it if you gave up. That is not an exact quote, but it kept me sending my first and second novels out and out and out and...

Chickpea Lover: Not a Cookbook, won first prize in a literary contest. The prize was having it submitted to a publisher who kept it two years and rejected it.

Here's where stubborn kicked in.

Not caring that publishers said they didn't want multiple submissions, I mass mailed it. Rejections poured in. There were at least 40 before I received an email that Five Star in Maine that wanted to publish it.

This will help me get an agent, I thought. I mass mailed to over 30 agents saying I had an offer for my novel, I needed an agent. Few replied. In the negative.

I found an agent, but only because I met her personally at a conference.

The novel was published in Russia because my agent deliberately left a copy on the nightstand  of the Russian literary agent who was visiting.

Eleven novels, a non-fiction book, a short-story collaboration with writers from all over the world and a blog collection later, I'm still writing.

My stubbornness is the reason that I am living in Europe. As a new bride, my husband, an Army musician, was stationed in Stuttgart Germany. I wanted to stay. He did not. Because I also wanted a degree (another example of my stubbornness as I fought my way through despite marital disapproval) going back was not totally awful.

Once single, I plotted ways to move abroad.

At one point I'd sold everything I owned and moved only to have my mother develop cancer. I went back to Boston until she died.

I set myself a goal. If I couldn't find a job in 2,000 CVs (resumes), it wasn't meant to be. I flew to France to get help wanted papers (pre-Internet days) I used directories of French companies and my membership in the International Association of Business Communicators.

I carried piles of applications to the post.

About the 800th resume, I saw an ad in the International Herald Tribune: The wants were:

• Knows Digital Equipment Corporation
• Speaks English, German, French

I knew DEC. I'd helped set up their credit union earlier.

My German was rusty, my French almost non existent.

It wasn't France, but Switzerland, which I'd never tried because getting working permission was next to impossible. The last line of the ad read, "We'll get working papers."

I faxed a resume and within minutes there was a response. That was July. In September, I was seated at my desk in Neuchâtel, Switzerland.

Stubborn to work for the things I want? Oh yes!

But I have a theory--I will do whatever I can to make something happen and then let fate decide.

Fate has been good to me. But that would be another blog.