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It is Day 13 of the Write the Story! writing challenge. How is your writing going?
Are you still going strong? Keep going. Keep following wherever your character is taking the story.
Did you maybe drop off since the challenge started? That's okay! In the words of the iconic Journey song, don't stop believing. Don't stop believing in yourself. Don't stop believing in your writing.
And, more importantly---don't stop writing!
That goes for those whose writing and word counts are going strong and for those who thought they'd write a whole lot more during this November writing challenge.
If that's you, if you've sort of fallen off the writing path and you're thinking of yourself as having failed, take these words from Ray Bradbury to heart: "You fail only if you stop writing.” And, before you give into the disappointment and the desire for a pity party, let's consider the bigger picture, okay? Because there's more to Ray Bradbury's words than might realize.
And that leads into today's encouraging quote, also from Ray Bradbury, but with some added depth and perspective. This passage comes from Bradbury's book Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity:
So we should not look down on work nor look down on the forty-five out of fifty-two stories written in our first year as failures. To fail is to give up. But you are in the midst of a moving process. Nothing fails then. All goes on. Work is done. If good, you learn from it. If bad, you learn even more. Work done and behind you is a lesson to be studied. There is no failure unless one stops. Not to work is to cease, tighten up, become nervous and therefore destructive of the creative process.
The failure he refers to is only if you stop writing. And I believe that can be interpreted as quitting altogether.
If you are not writing right now because life is, well, life---it's busy and crowding out your creative time and energy---that is not the same as if you have stopped writing. In other words, you can cover yourself with grace and acknowledge that life has little to no writing opportunity right now.
But I'm fairly certain those of you who jumped into this Write the Story! writing challenge have no intention of stopping writing completely.
Still, I'd love to encourage you just one little bit more today. If you find yourself wishing you were writing during this challenge, let me ask you to take a look at your day and your time. Did you take time to scroll Facebook or Instagram today? Did you spend time playing a game on your phone today? Did you dive into a television show or movie?
No worries, friends. I'm not here to shame you or police you. Because sometimes that's what we need. But I will pose the question, can you steal 10 or 15 minutes from those activities to write a few words? Maybe try a writing sprint like we talked about yesterday? Even a few bullet points for a scene you know is coming are words that you can drop in the comments and count toward your efforts.
Wherever you are in the writing journey right now, know I am cheering you on and I won't stop believing---in you!
Remember: drop your daily word count in the comments so we can track your daily word count and provide you a final total when we hit November 30.
