Look Back

Thanks everyone for your encouragement and commiseration during my editing woes last week (here and here). I'm not sure if I would still be writing with such purpose without such a supportive group of writerly friends, so, seriously - thank you.

I haven't edited the past couple of days, but I have written...and read what I've written. And I was a bit surprised at what I found...it wasn't bad. Yeah, there's some problems with these past stories of mine, plot problems. But these snippets aren't bad. In fact, when I finished reading the few pages I'd written, I found myself wishing the author would have finished writing the book!

It's an odd feeling to like what you're reading and then remember that you wrote what you're reading. A good feeling.

And then a sinking feeling as you consider the work involved in finishing it. When you consider that you can't work on it until you finish what you're working on. (I may or may not have broken that rule this weekend...*cough*)

There's a lot of things that can encourage us. One of them - one of the biggest - is friends. Another is motivational books and teachers, like Gale has discovered; they give you more skills to keep persevering. And one of them is to look back at what you have done.

Because you're a good writer. Go back and look at something, not necessarily the something you're trying to publish, but the something you had fun writing. Go read it. Feel your heart beat a little like it does when you read your own favorite books by other authors.

Chin up, fellow writerly peoples. You can write. You're good at it. You love it.
Don't give up.