Write Good or Die

every "no" sounded even louder and had far reaching repercussions. Was the writing itself bad or just the business idea bad? And if the writing wasn't good and if I couldn't get this idea off the ground, I'd have to give up writing full time and take a nine-to-five job back in the corporate world. "Oh, no!"
    I began having dreams where every participant spoke a stilted version of the English language. No matter what the question, the answer was "no." I imagined a character in a children's book named "Princess No-No." I saw the letters "n" and "o" inside of other words: like soprano, dinosaur, piano, and stenographer.
    Sometimes I would whisper "yes" out loud to myself just to make sure the word still existed.
    I was telling a friend, who is a professional fundraiser, about my dilemma. She laughed and told me that in her business the "no's" are a good thing. "For each "no" you are getting closer to a "yes," she said. She even had a mathematical equation she'd worked out from ten years of experience. She had to get 15 "no's" to get a "yes." And since she was asking for contributions for a worthwhile charity, her no-to-yes ratio would be lower than mine would. Because I was looking for a big investor I could count on a 100-to-one no-to-yes ratio.
    So I started to tally the "no's." In June I got 31; in July, 25. (I was starting to get excited, 56 no's down, only 44 to go!) And in August, I got 12 "no's" and then, one wonderful, resonant, "yes."
    A funny thing happened to me in those three months. I went from dreading and hating the "no's" to understanding something about them. They represented hard work and determination on my part. I was proud of those "no's." Plus, in order to find the right partner for my business the "no's" were important. They weeded out the people I really didn't want to work with anyway. Only someone who truly loved my idea and saw its potential, only the person who said "yes" was the right person.
    So if you are searching for participation in a project, looking for a partner or for financing, expect to hear a lot of "no's." Will you ever become immune to them? Well… No.
    But can you get to a point where you can deal with them? Yes, you betcha!

    M.J. Rose— http://www.mjrose.com
    ###

10. Success
    By Kristine Kathryn Rush
    http://www.kristinekathrynrusch.com

    So…
    Success. Why, you ask, would the topic of success take three posts? Success is success is success, right?
    I wish it were that simple.
    Because success is more complicated than failure.
    Infinitely more complicated.
    And sadly, success can cause your freelance business to fail. I don’t have any statistics, but I do know from anecdotal evidence that success has caused a lot more freelancers I know personally to fail than their repeated setbacks did.
    Huh? Most of you don’t believe me. But it’s true. Success derails people, partly because it’s unexpected.
    First, let’s define success. Even that’s not easy. It takes my handy dandy Macmillan Contemporary Dictionary (which isn’t contemporary any longer since I bought it while in college in 1979) three different bullet points to define the word. It takes my handy dandy Encarta World English Dictionary (which is a bit more contemporary since it came with the four-year-old Macintosh that I write on) four bullet points to define the word. Neither dictionaries put the bullet points in the same order.
    So, combining the dictionary definitions and putting them in my own words (since dictionary definitions are copyrighted), with my own numerical bullet points (more than four), here are the dictionary definitions of success:
    1. Achieving something planned.
    2. Achieving something attempted.
    3. A favorable result.
    4. Attaining a goal.
    5. An impressive achievement especially (as both dictionaries note) fame, wealth, power or social status.
    6. A person who has a record of achievement especially (as one dictionary notes) in gaining fame, wealth, power or social status.
    7. A person who is successful (says the other dictionary, thereby defining a word with the same root word, which has always irritated me. So let’s break down successful from the same dictionary which defines it as…attaining success. Grrrr).
    8. A person who succeeds (says the other dictionary doing the same damn thing. What does “succeeds” mean? Having the desired result; obtaining a desired object or outcome; coming next in line…um, say what?—oh, as in the prince succeeded his father, the king, who