#WordWeavers 12.12 — Have you ever wanted to give up being an author? What helped ...

RS, Author, Novelist /

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2023-12-12 08:58:46

#WordWeavers 12.12 — Have you ever wanted to give up being an author? What helped you to continue?

Not wanted. Did. From 2001 through 2014, leaving behind a number of completed unsold novels. I hadn't realized I'd hit a dead end in my craft, but I did know it wasn't fun any longer. I had tied myself into knots and understood I was missing out on life, so I stopped.

I couldn't /not/ write, however. It's in my blood.

By 2015, I had to communicate. I had to find a way. I had to get my thoughts out, read.

That meant stopping taking my ideas so seriously that it kept causing me to freeze on a blank page.

I decided to switch from writing 3rd person to 1st person to help me combat my greatest flaw, my inability to stay in strict POV. I'd always wanted to try that solution, but had been told not to because "popular authors" avoided it.

I used that excuse to write ideas that weren't unique but that I thought could still speak to a reader's heart. I started mixing slice-of-life with adventure. As practice, I quickly found nothing mattered except the joy of writing. I was willing even to give it away, for the price of that joy and the discovery.

The strategy is working pretty well, so far. I can write on demand, assuming I'm interested in writing something. Blank pages are merely an opportunity to practice. I can trust the inspiration will come when it wants to and that it will return, and it always does. If I don't finish something, I don't. I can move on, because I know there will be something else to write, new adventures to imagine, new characters to live as, and there always are. Not writing no longer bother me. Where there is day, there is always night, and night is for rest.

I've learned enough that I'm writing more and more ambitious stories.

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2023-12-12 08:58:46

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