(one of my friends sent me an email last week. In it, she told me how hard it was to write and how she felt like her muse was on vacation and maybe she’d do NaNo and Sven next year but just now she was tired and uninspired. This is what I sent her and she wrote me back and said I should post it at Sven as long as I didn’t use her name, LOL. BTW, she didn’t quit and she’s been managing 1K a day!)

It’s work, plain and simple. Yes, sometimes it feels magical, it feels effortless and the words just fall from your fingers, but most of the time, it takes dedication and ambition. Being an author isn’t just about writing, it’s about promoting and always thinking about the future. It’s about realities like rejection and sometimes it’s about envy and dejection.

When it’s perfect, those moments when you see a spine bearing your name on a shelf at borders, when you get a letter from a reader or a bookstore owner contacts you to say you’re a favorite at their store - those moments carry you through.

So please, don’t tell me writing is hard after a week of effort. I know it’s hard. I do it every day. Instead, suck it up and realize the end product makes it worth the effort. That nothing is better than “the end” Well nothing until you sell the thing! That’s pretty awesome too. But every author has trunk books - those books they love, books they think are awesome but simply don’t sell. In the end, every book you write makes you a better writer.

There are no sparkly muses. I know this is not a popular opinion but it’s my opinion nonetheless. There are no perfect moments, at least not in enough quanitity to finish a book! It’s about work. It’s about pushing yourself to get another hundred or five hundred words before you shut down for the day. It’s about not allowing yourself to watch that movie or check your email until you finish the chapter or the scene.

I’m a hardass about this, I know. Yes, I believe in mentoring and supporting but sometimes, people need a smack with the hard palm of reality. I’m f***ing so tired right now, my kids were a trial today and my husband has been working 16 hour days for the last month. But I got my words in anyway. That’s the only way I can finish this book. Bit by bit, word by word, paragraph by paragraph until I reach the end. And then I edit and revise and then it goes away to an editor.

And I start a new book, LOL.

Writing is an amazing thing. I am soooo blessed to be able to do it and to make a go of it. But it’s work. Nothing worth having is easy but if it’s worth having, you’ll work for it.

I know you’re worth it. I know you’re worth the effort and the sweat and the frustration. But YOU have to know it too. Because I don’t want to hear you whine! I want to hear you say, “Lawdy this chapter kicked my butt but I finished it!” or whatever. You can’t sell a book you don’t finish. You can’t be a writer if you don’t write.

So do it.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under Lauren Dane. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.