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dominicmatthewjackson

95

In The Origin of the Species,

Darwin writes of “survival of the fittest”

only twice, but writes about love 95 times.

He spent years on an island searching

the skies, and talking to birds, yet still

couldn’t help but write love letters to the world.

Maybe only those of us who love are fit to survive.

Maybe religion and science are really saying the same thing:

If we don’t have love, we don’t have anything.

wnq-writers

I don’t think I miss you, not really. But from time to time, I can’t help but wonder how you are. If your corner of the world is treating you right; if your happy days outnumber the bad. I do not miss you anymore… But I hope you know I remember.

died-of-thirst (via wnq-writers)

dominicmatthewjackson

I got some bad news from my editor last night about my latest novel. She enjoyed the story and its characters. She even added how much she loved my voice–which is one of the biggest compliments a writer could get.

But she went on to say that–as the story is currently written–the book would be impossible to market. It’s too heavy to be a thriller, and too violent to be contemporary fiction. Also–and this is probably the biggest issue–the book isn’t quite youthful enough to be YA fiction, but also, too childish at times for the adult market. She ended the message telling me I had a great story–In fact, I had four of them. Unfortunately, they were all in the same book. I’ll be honest here–I wanted to quit. I wanted to burn the story and go back to writing crappy poems about horses or pen some more letters to Ross Perot. I wanted to write anything but fiction for the rest of my life. But then I woke up early today and said, “Alright, let’s do it again.” And so here I am–Rewriting a book I thought would be finished a year ago. And maybe I’ll have to write it again ten more times–I don’t know. But I have a story to tell, so I’m gonna try my best to do that.

Last thing: As I write this today, I can’t help but notice some of my friends here beating themselves up about messing up on New Year’s resolutions already, failing Fall courses, or dealing with breaks-ups. In fact, it seems just about all of us have failed at something recently.

But guess what? We don’t go down that easy!

So, (if you’d be so kind to lift your coffee mugs, water bottles, or morning whiskey,) Here’s to Chapter 1: A New Beginning