I enjoyed reading this post.

I don't think the author sets out to offer hope to everyone but she does show how much she wanted to be published and how close she came to giving up.

http://internationalchicklitmonth.com/2013/05/02/a-letter-to-my-unpublished-self-by-ali-mcnamara/

Easy for her to write with hindsight! But I think it' s v useful to know how close she came to giving up. I think we all get to that point ( often more than once) and it's whether you keep going that goes a long way to determining whether you get published

it's whether you keep going that goes a long way to determining whether you get published

Yes, so true.

Easy for her to write with hindsight!

That's what made me think twice about posting this. I mean, not everyone is going to be successful even if they do everything they can.

But, yes, this is important:

it's whether you keep going that goes a long way to determining whether you get published

This has got to be the biggest humblebrag ever!

And this -

First of all, stop worrying! One day you’ll look back on all those tears and that sadness and wish you hadn’t wasted all that time being so miserable.

- is the attitude of an utter wimp. Instead of getting the point, that such self-flagellation is unproductive, demeaning and misguided, she actually tells us, in effect, it's justified because she eventually got published!

But you’ll get past all that, because the negative things are so tiny in comparison to the wonderful news that you’re going to be an author Ali

Er? So you're only an author if you get published? Doesn't that depend on who you're published by and for what reason? By this criteria, Katie Price is an author.

Nothing could induce me to read anything written by this person. I'd sooner read Jeffrey Archer who at least, let's face it, never sat around going boo-hoo nobody loves me.

A nice letter, but I was rubbed up the wrong way but her failing to put a comma before her name when directly addressing herself - twice. Call me a grammar nazi but I do think if you're going to parade your authorly achievements in a public blog post, you should been seen to grasped the basics of writing English. Okay, we all slip up now and then in private, but it's careless to let it slip into a public post.

Oh yuck.