I'm Thankful For...

Yesterday was our writer's meeting. We decided to do a pot luck dinner and talk about the blessings and curses of being a writer. The spread we had was delicious and the company even better. It's so great to have the opportunity to be apart of such a wonderful team. I'm blessed and especially thankful for my family of writers.

The best part is being able to have people to talk to who know what you are going through. It's like a support group for writers. Every now and again we throw out lifelines to those who feel as if they are drowning and sometimes I find myself a precipitant of those lines. Mostly it's a chance to make friends with like-mined individuals as well as have intelligent adult conversation (hard to come by when you're a stay a home mom).

So I'm thankful for my support group of writer's (you know who you are). ;)

The Excuse

Yeah, it's that guilty pleasure that we indulge in way too often called the excuse. It's another way to procrastinate and to tell ourselves it's alright to put something off. I'm exceptionally guilty of this particular offense. If there is an excuse in the book, I've used it and this couldn't be more true than with my writing.

We discussed the issue of 'painful writing' today at my writer's meeting. Some people don't seem to have this problem, but for the rest of us out there who do... well you know what I'm talking about. It's sitting at the laptop and feeling it building as soon as you fire the device up. The worst of it hits full force as soon as the document file opens up. Black and white text stares back mocking you, but you suddenly remember something you forgot to do that just has to be done right that moment, so what do you do? That's right, you jump up to go do it real quick and then conveniently forget that you'd actually intended to get some writing done that day. Yeah, you feel smug because you got so much accomplished for the day, except for the one thing that you really want to do... to write.

Writing Contests

Writing is something I enjoy immensely, but feel I still have a a lot to learn about it. For this reason, I am always trying to find new ways to challenge myself in this area. So I have setup goals to make this happen. One part of my goals is to learn to do better in reaching deadlines, and what better way to accomplish this than to participate in writing contests.

Believe

It's a word most people associate with religion and Santa Clause, but there is another side of it as well. Until recently I did not understand the power behind that word. It took a movie (Kung Fu Panda), of all things, to see it as something else I could apply to serious problem (writer's block) I was having. I guess I was never open to consider the possibilities and depth of that single word until I was ready. What am I talking about? Belief in oneself.

Trials of Writing

Anyone who has tried their hand at writing, even casually, knows the triumphs and heartaches of the art. It is a thing of beauty as well as a source of great frustration, but staying the course always ends with victory (even if in the heat of the moment it doesn't seem that way). It takes a combination of determination, spiritual guidance, belief in yourself, love of the art, love of words, understanding, thick skin and magic intuition to carve out a story worth telling.

There are times when the frustration I feel for not getting the words right becomes so powerful that it consumes my every waking moment. It throws my world off balance until the moment I discover the insight I need to keep moving forward. It's a painful war but one I battle bravely, because to not to would mean utter failure. I enjoy the challenge as I offer my hand to fellow soldiers in an attempt to compel myself forward into the darkness, and with luck we all will emerge on the other side better than what we had once been.