My heart pounds. A friend is telling me my career is about to take off.
It’s exciting because finally my writing will be out there. But it’s also scary because my novels will be open to criticism. Writers, who already have a vivid imaginations, can easily imagine the worst.
Anna Howard Shaw campaigned tirelessly for women’s suffrage for over 30 years. She was a great orator. In 1912, when states Arizona, Kansas, and Oregon gave women the right to vote, Anna spoke at the major cities in all three states, making four or five speeches a day.
She knew how to speak to a crowd from her earlier experience as a minister. Yet after her first time preaching, she could have easily given up her calling. She had been well received by the audience, but the next day her brother-in-law took out a notice in the newspaper:
A young girl named Anna Shaw, seventeen years old, preached in Ashton yesterday. Her real friends deprecate the course she is pursuing.
Her friends and family stating publicly they detesting that she was preaching? She must have been humiliated. But she didn’t let it stop her. She went on to preach 36 times that year.
Yes, I might get some criticism. But I won’t let it stop me.