I often write a lot about staying on schedule…keeping up the forward momentum, tracking your progress, pushing yourself – basically, a whole bunch of buzz phrases that really just translate into sitting in your seat and writing.
Sometimes though, I really wish it were just easier.
I read a post the other day on Rachelle Gardner’s blog (which you should probably be reading anyway), titled: You’re Too Good To Quit, as well as many of the guest comments. This thing we do: trying to write, trying to craft, trying to create (particularly professionally), is fraught with challenges and failures and more than a little futility. There’s the exception that proves the rule, I guess, there’s always that someone out there we read about who writes the perfect novel the first time, has it published immediately to acclaim, and who then talks about their rapid success with a shrug of the shoulders…a kind of, I’m not sure what all the fuss is about coolness that on the worst days can make you nearly homicidal. But that’s not the way it is for most of us. It’s a one step forward, three or four or five step back process. It can be a slog, it can be work. Our muse isn’t particularly helpful, and the critique of all that work – the grading of this thing we do – can be particularly frustrating.
The voice is good, but the plot’s weak.
The pace is fantastic, but the characterization is thin.
Ghost stories were popular last week, this week it’s demons.
I spend almost as much time motivating myself to write as I do actually writing. Staring at my alarm clock at 6:15 AM, I’m my own best cheerleader, because I have to be. But sometimes, in my heart of hearts, I really wish it were easier, because in the moments of doubt, the moments of frustration, the moments of failure, it can feel so easy to pack it in.
But…I never do, and never will. Professional success in anything is tough (there are a lot of great shooters who never make the NBA – of course, I really suck at that), but for me, writing isn’t just about that type of success. It can’t be
Every day I sit in my seat and get some words out, I’m successful.
Every time I get a story done and flip back through the completed pages and find some diamonds in the dirt, I’m successful.
Every time I read something I’ve written and think, yeah, that’s exactly what I wanted to say, I’m successful.
In the end, it’s hard not because I want to succeed, it’s hard because I want to be good.
And if it were easy, everyone would be doing it…
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