What I want to tell all you writers and poets out there is - lean back.
If something you're working on isn't working, be it poem or essay or song or story. Stop. Lean back. Let it go. Take a few days off from it. A week if you can.
If you're sending out your writing with an anxious heart, desperate to be published, making a big production out of it (scouring The Writer's Market until you can't see straight, spending tons of money on contest fees) and no one is accepting your work and you're not even getting honorable mention - stop. Lean back.
You're getting too intense. You're crushing the possibility of your success with the weight of your need.
There's a moment when you cross the line from just believing in your writing and working to get it out there as part of the process - submitting to lit mags and contests, querying agents - to trying to force something to happen - the exact thing you want to happen, in exactly the way you want it.
You have to lean back to receive.
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