C.S. Lewis-- "Failures are the finger posts on the road to achievement."

     I once said that I adore failure because it spurs me on. It truly does. I decided long ago that when I got on the writing trail I was going to frame every rejection I got so that when I look upon them, I'm reminded of how far I've come on the journey. Each form rejection or piece of advice would take me one step closer to publication. Lately though, I feel stuck. I'm considering all that it takes--the darned effort. Sometimes I feel quite like an orange, one that is being squeezed beyond its last drop of juice. So by the time I look at that twentieth revision, I'm still thinking it's not ready to be sent off to an agent or publisher, "sheer garbage" I think to myself. I'm certainly too drained to tweak it again. The balance between family and writing is wearing me thin lately. I hate when it wears me thin. It's as if the balance of things is trying to mock me, trying to say, "You can't do it, definitely cannot do it all."
     Normally, I have backup ready. I have a clever activity on hand, something that makes me feel alive again--like a kid--young at heart, free and ready for anything--nothing to fear. So I cry because truly what is fear but something imagined. See, this is where things go wrong by thinking fear is imagined. Fear cripples many a writer from seeing the light, from emerging from that steep hole, from dancing upon divinity when they discover what they had been striving for all along really is possible. Then I read this and fear is suddenly squashed with one single line, "The birds have no fear". Carpe Diem, Carpe P.M. Carpe any way you like, but keep writing! Sometimes it takes a village to raise a writer from the ground. I adore my village!

What line does it for you--the ultimate fear squashing line?

Who or whom is in your writer village? Show the love!