Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is sometimes referred to as insanity. Nevertheless, it’s amazing how many different ways we can justify insanity. Sometimes the best thing you can do for your writing career, or any career for that matter, is admit when something is NOT working. For example...
There’s different ways of looking at this. Some people say anything other than cockeyed optimism is negativity. That’s not true. Optimists are a wonderful type of person, pessimists are usually people no one wants to be around, but little is said about realists. Realists are those people who just call it as they see it, whether positive or negative. That’s not always a bad thing. For example, we have all heard that old saying “a pessimist sees the tunnel, an optimist sees the light at the end of the tunnel.” Well, a realist sees the train coming and gets all three of you off the track before you die.
Think about it this way. When the Wright Brothers were trying to invent the airplane, they first thought that the wings had to go up and down, because they were studying birds to understand flight. Well, at some point, somewhere, in one of those long days of invention, one or both of them said “this isn’t working.” That wasn’t pessimism, it was realism. If they had never admitted what wasn't working, they would’ve never found out what was.
I know a writer who self published a book five years ago and she is still running around giving away free copies to try to get reviews. If you self published five years ago, and you’re still doing that (or even doing that all) something isn’t going right. You need to reevaluate your marketing strategy and whether or not there is any value in handing out free copies just to get reviews that no one will ever see if no one’s landing on your page.
Sometimes it’s hard to admit something isn’t getting the job done, because we don’t know what will get the job done. Therefore, it’s easier to just keep doing the same thing over and over again.
Well, it may be easy, but it won’t lead to success.
If something has clearly failed, it’s okay to say it failed. That way we’ll move on to the next thing that maybe won’t fail. That’s not pessimism, it’s not necessarily optimism, but it is realism, and it’s the real world that we have to live in! Write on!