It's comforting to delude ourselves that our lives and careers should follow a steady upward trajectory, like a climbing line on a graph. But in reality, they resemble the unpredictable zigzag of the stock market, with its ups and downs. This fluctuation is not a sign...
You had a bad experience. You spent all day writing and turned up with nothing. You had an interview, and it didn’t go well. You sent your manuscript to an agent; they sent it back with a preprinted “no thanks.” The movie deal fell through. The publishing deal fell...