Three Ideas I Keep in Mind When Times are Tough

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day, saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow’.”

– Mary Anne Radmacher

She was only in her mid 20s when Joanne found herself on the brink of suicide. She was a single mother living in the UK on government assistance. She was jobless, and hadn’t been particularly successful in the one career she had had previously, working for non-profit organization as a researcher, and secretary.

She had lost her mother to multiple sclerosis only a few years prior, and had been through a heart-breaking divorce. An aspiring author who had just finished a novel, her manuscript had now been rejected by 12 of the publishers she had pitched it to. It seemed to her that there was little reason for hope.

But Joanne would be proven wrong.

Upon attempt number 13 she found a small publisher who decided to take her on. They saw potential in her work, but had one request. Concerned that small boys might not want to read a book from a female author, they asked her to write under a pen name. Joanne agreed.

She decided on a pen name that would use her first initial, and that of her paternal grandmother.