From Yoda
“Do or do not. There is no try.” - Yoda
I often hear people say they want to try to write a book. I tell them to do it. All of a sudden, they have all kinds of excuses. Not enough time. They don’t know where to start. Their grammar needs work. They don’t know how or where to submit their work.
My answer? I had all those concerns, and guess what? EVERY ONE OF THEM CAN BE FIXED. You make time. You start by putting your pencil to the paper. You buy a book on grammar. You join writer groups and do research for submission questions.
If you want something bad enough, you do it. If you go into it with the attitude that you’re going to “try,” instead of “I will,” you have already sabotaged yourself.
Football coaches don’t tell their team, “We’re going to try to win this game!” They say, “We WILL win!”
Military commanders won’t instill a lot of confidence in their men by saying, “We’re going to try to win this battle.”
So remember, as you’re looking at your half-finished manuscript and wondering how the heck you’re going to finish it, that you CAN finish it.
Do or do not. There is no try. 
April 15th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
I *heart* Yoda.
April 16th, 2008 at 2:34 am
Yoda lived in a swamp full of do-do…I’m just sayin’
April 16th, 2008 at 6:05 am
Good post, and very true. As someone somewhere else once said ‘you can’t edit a blank page’. It’s only by writing that we can improve (even if you have to lock yourself in the bathroom for an hour of uninterrupted writing). Practice may not *literally* make perfect, but it can certainly improve on what was done before.
Thanks for the reminder Larissa!