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Welcome to Day 6 of the Write the Story! writing challenge. We are closing in on the last part of the first week already. How is it going?

If you're where you hoped you'd be, way to go!

If you're beyond where you thought you'd be, that's awesome!

If you're not quite where you wanted to be, no worries!

Because wherever you happen to be as of today, if you've written some words, you are farther along than you were a week ago and that is amazing! Give yourself a pat on the back and take a moment to celebrate because words written translates into a win!

And that leads into some wonderful encouragement from Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear.

If you've never read this book, I highly recommend it; even better, grab the audio version because Elizabeth Gilbert reads it herself. Even reading or listening to just a few minutes often encourages my creativity and the desire to sit down at my keyboard.

The book is arranged into six parts and each part holds easily absorbed short sections filled with anecdotes steeped in inspiration. These words come from the short section, Done Is Better than Good.

The only reason I was able to persist in completing my first novel was that I allowed it to be stupendously imperfect. I pushed myself to continue writing it, even though I strongly disapproved of what I was producing. That book was so far from perfect, it made me nuts. 

…

At seventy-five pages in, I nearly stopped. It felt too terrible to continue, too deeply embarrassing. But I pushed through my own shame only because I decided that I refused to go to my grave with seventy-five pages of an unfinished manuscript sitting in my desk drawer. I did not want to be that person

…

I also kept remembering what my mother always used to say: “Done is better than good.”

If you're in a place where you wish you had done more, go back and read those words again: Done is better than good. And how do you get to done? Doing exactly what you're doing--putting words on the page.

It doesn't matter how fast or how slow you go in getting the words down, as long as you are getting some down. Slow and steady or quick bursts of high word counts, it doesn't matter.

Writing, like life, is not a race.

The important thing is to show up and do something, because some is better than none!

Wherever you happen to be, know that I am celebrating with you and I am cheering you on!

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.