I just found out that I’ve been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Several years ago, I read something Jane Smiley had said that really resonated with me. Unfortunately I can’t locate it now, but she said something along the lines of, young people/writers aren’t ambitious enough. Her goal as a younger writer had been to have a long career and write lots of books, and she achieved that goal.

Since then I’ve had kind of an informal mental list of lofty, potentially impossible goals. They included the following:

-write a really great short story

-publish a short story in a large circulation magazine or journal

-write and publish a novel

-have a long career publishing many novels, and…

-somewhere along the way, get nominated for a Pushcart.

 

Suddenly those other goals don’t seem as impossible as they once did.

Keep writing.