How Do We Appreciate You? Let Me Count the Ways!

Thursday night at the Team Member webinar, I ended the broadcast by telling our team members how special they are to us and how we appreciate them. Afterwards, my email inbox filled up with members thanking me, many saying they were brought to tears.

As writers—and human beings—we need to know how much we are appreciated. And what’s more, you’re so important to us, we could tell you every minute of every day from now until eternity and it would still fall short of expressing how much you mean to us.

With that truth in mind, I thought I’d tell you just a snippet of how much we appreciate each of you. As we sit down at the Thanksgiving table and bow our heads, we’ll give thanks for you. Here are just some of the reasons:

Keep on writing, keep on writing

I wrote a novella last week. 31, 160 words. That’s over 5K a day. Now, here’s what we all have to keep in mind – many of these words will have to be rewritten or deleted. I will have to go scene by scene and make sure I’ve inserted storyworld, and the 5 Ws to anchor the scene. I’ll have to ask what the main emotion of the scene is, and how to strengthen it. I’ll have to tighten my writing, make it clearer, make sure I’m not overwriting.

I’ll have to make sure I am telling the story between the quotes, and that I am wrapping up my dialogue with the right meaningful action and body language, adding zingers.

And, I’ll have to make sure I all the ingredients of the Scene Tension Equation.

All these things are in my brain as I’m writing, trust me. But, if I want to forget ahead and give myself something to work with, then I have to be like Dori in Finding Nemo.

Don’t look back. Forget everything but my goal….reaching the end. (or, P Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way)

But how do we keep that focus? I know it can be hard, because even in the middle of a scene you suddenly think: WAIT! I just came up with something BRILLIANT and I need to add it into chapter 3!

Five Reasons Why You Quit

I’ve done it. I’m sure you have too. You get a great idea and dive right in. Somewhere along the way, you chip away at your enthusiasm until one day you suddenly realize you haven’t pursued that thing in quite a while. You quit.

That’s fine if you started watching season one of Castle or took belly dancing lessons. There comes a time when those things naturally come to an end. But when it comes to quitting your writing dream, it will leave you empty and utterly unhappy.

There are any number of reasons why individuals throw in the towel on their pursuits, but here are ones I have found to be the top five:

Take a Deep Breath

You’re six days into the NaNoWriMo and MBTWriMo writing marathon. You started out great. Thousands of words flew from your fingertips and onto the computer screen. Your writer friends envied your massive word count.

But today, the cursor on the blank screen taunts you. The blink-blink-blink flashes your zero word count to the world. When you finally force words to come out, they resemble your “See spot run” sentences of your first grade reader.

Ahhh… to be a writer.

Okay. Sit back, take a deep breath and relax! It’s all good. Your creative juices come in waves just like the tides in the ocean. Sometimes they come crashing in with the force of a tsunami and words flood your work in progress. Other times you’ll walk a mile just to reach a trickle.

You can’t hammer out word count every hour of the day. It’s unnatural. Unhealthy. It wouldn’t be wise for you to any more than you should eat constantly for all those hours. Your body has to have time to process what you’ve consumed. So it is with your word count.

When words won’t come and the contest pressure is sucking the life out of you, these things will help you get back on the right track: