Many of you are well-acquainted with the topic of this piece. Like us, you are the battle scarred writers-in-arms who fight the good fight day in and day out, who faithfully stick motivational quotes on your computer and look to them every time you poise your fingers above the keyboard. We also acknowledge that there are many of you who are not yet familiar with the word perseverance beyond it’s general meaning, and a few who lie somewhere in between. We hope this piece can offer each of you a little something.

“What you can do, or dream you can do,
Begin it,
Boldness has genius, power and magic
In it.” -- Goethe

It took a lot of courage for us to write those first, purposeful words “Chapter One” fourteen years ago. To dare to dream that one day someone would not only want to read the words we longed to write but :::gulp::: pay for them. Yes, we may have stumbled over the years, choosing the school of hard knocks over the traditional route most take, but our love affair with the written word never waned. If anything it grew almost obsessively stronger. And time and again we returned to Goethe’s words, finding in them the courage to continue down what would be a long, long road. We share them so you may find the same courage.

“....people seldom see the halting and painful steps by which the most insignificant success is achieved.” -- Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller’s teacher

If you’re like us, in your quest you’ll encounter rejections, low contest scores, and generally pitifully bad days. While getting/surviving any of these is never easy, each eventually will be easier to swallow.

Slowly you’ll advance from that gut deep personal pain and sense of failure you’ll feel at that first rejection, to a quiet pang of acceptance and increased determination whenever you encounter the obstacles that litter your own path. Learn from these struggles. Each strengthens you, determines the qualities that make you uniquely you, and prepares you for all the learning that lies ahead. If someone told us when we began that our hurdles would be so many, would we have continued? We like to think that yes, we would have, but we don’t know simply because the question was never asked. Now, ask that question of yourself. We wish you the strength to answer it honestly, for it is in honesty that the strength to endure resides.

“Success is a journey, not a destination.” -- Anonymous

Finally, there will come a day when you’ll not only fully understand the meaning of this last quote, but if you press positively ahead you’ll recognize that while you were persevering, weathering all those spirit-strengthening struggles, you’ll find that you are living it. You will feel in sync with everything and everyone around you. You will feel confident in and comforted by your growing ability as a writer. While we can’t promise that you’ll experience these powerful sensations every moment of every day -- an impossibility for it is only through struggle that we grow, and we never stop growing -- rest assured, they will return. Be prepared, because the next time will be infinitely sweeter than the last. We wish you the perseverance to see you through the times in between.


Lori & Tony Karayianni are glad they persevered. At the gracious hands of editor Brenda Chin, their first published book Constant Craving -- written under the pen name Tori Carrington -- will be released by Harlequin Temptation in November ‘98.