More writerly insight gleamed from the olympics:

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The bigger, more common reality, however, is not the tragic story of the near-miss, but this: just because you have published one manuscript does not guarantee that you will publish all of your manuscripts. Every time you submit your work, you enter it into conditions which you can’t completely predict or control. Just because you may have landed your work with one publisher doesn’t mean you’re going to walk into a publishing house in the future and sign the dotted line with your next manuscript without first submitting your new work to intense scrutiny. Your next manuscript, and the one after that, and so forth, will have to earn its way and survive on its own every time.

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Dammit! Why didn’t I become a chartered surveyor like mummy wanted?!?!?

Everything I’ve learned about writing this year I’ve relearned by watching the Olympics [series Part Two] « Booklife.