Have you ever tried something new? Something out of your comfort zone? It can be a challenge, right? And sometimes you get tempted to quit.
Writing isn’t new to me. I’ve been doing it a long time, but life circumstances necessitated I put my fiction goals on the back burner for several years. We have weathered some significant storms in our family: my own battle with cancer, my daughter’s battle with autoimmune issues that left her homebound during high school, caring for my other child who has some special needs that often leave her unable to sleep, my dad’s diagnosis with Alzheimer’s, and then the big, bad virus that shut the world down…
Yeah, you get it, and I would bet a lot of chocolate you have your own list. Sending you hugs as I write this…
But…I continued to plug away one tiny step at a time. Some days I only wrote a paragraph. Some days I didn’t know where my computer was.
Then one week we had a snowstorm and life in North Texas came to a halt, as it does during any kind of ice. (What can I say? We don’t have the ice skills you more northern folks do!)
Anyhow, I sat down at my computer and decided to rewrite an old idea. I wrote 100,000 words in about two weeks, and as one does when on a writing high, I immediately I sent the book to one of my awesome critique partners. In her sweet manner, she told me it was really well-written, but…missing something pretty important: a plot. Um WHOOPS! So after pouting for a day, I took a hot second to outline and wrote the whole thing again. That manuscript recently finaled in a writing contest and has gotten some really nice feedback. Yay!
Why am I telling you all this?
I want to encourage you, dear reader, not to give up. Sometimes life knocks us around. Sometimes things are crazy with the world (um…looking at you, 2020!). Sometimes things are hard with your health (yeah, I’m sticking my tongue out at you, melanoma!), and sometimes we find ourselves pulled low by the hard realities of life (still in counseling…I’d recommend it to anyone). But don’t give up on a dream. Just because today isn’t your day, don’t give up on tomorrow.
Stay strong, my friends!