What I want you to do today is to consider this (and perhaps mediate harder):
“Can I do this better?”
Editing is not the enemy.
Rewriting is not the problem.
Consider The Stretch (More about this later).
With Love & Ink,
There are parts of your writing that you should be learning from –and that you must learn from.
Without that level of humility, you will never grow, learn or learn what you can do better.
Remember that.
With Love & Ink,
Let me tell you a secret.
If you want to turn back, you can.
If you want to go forward, you can.
This is completely up to you. Yet, but I want you to know that there is no fun in a turnback. But here is what you will inherit if you turnback.
You will earn something that is worse than that rejection: REGRET.
It is one thing to get rejected over a work that you completed, edited and shopped.
It is another to allow the fear to choke the creative out of you.
A completed work can be reshopped, edited again, and submitted–but an incomplete work cannot be.
What is it that you desire to do writer?
If you go forward–there is a way forward. If you turnback, there is no way forward…by your own hand.
The three things I want you to remember as your write today:
1.) Believe you can.
2.) Believe you will.
3.) Believe it must.
With Love & Ink,
For the love of writing, I have decided not stop.
What have you decided not to stop doing?
Let writing be part of that.
With Love & Ink,
There will be a time where you will want to stop. I will not lie to you.
There will be times where stopping would be sexier than continuing ever could be. Yet, The Turn is going to determine what it is you are going to do next honestly. I will tell you this one thing. If you stop now, the story (no pun intended) will end right there.
Right there. Right now.
And how you handle The Turn, or a potential turn, is how you will continue. You must determine if you want to continue! The Turn (or the ghost thereof) is not bad in and of itself. It is something that you need to realize which is a reality.
A Turn is neutral. It is your reaction that will make it positive or negative.
Turns are watershed moments which invite you to look within you, to pull something else out–or to show you that nothing else is there. If there be something else in you that cannot relinquish this art, that cannot bear to keep silent, then do not turn back.
Dare to continue.
Stop at the pitstop and get gas–and keep going.
Season 1, Episode 1 started 4 years ago today in a basement of a rehabilitation facility.
I had no idea what I was doing, or how long I would be doing it.
This podcast has introduced poets, intellectuals, put people on to indie authors, and been encouraging to others.
Today, I am proud of me. I am celebrating!
I am owning every space I am in, writing my way in and out, bringing other people with me. I’m grateful for that.
And as of this morning?
There are 184 episodes.
A Black woman did this.
A Black woman writer did this.
…that’s flex all by itself.
There is always going to be the writing.
The other part to that is: there will always be the writing.
You can do it.
No one else will.
With Love & Ink,
Note: Look for more about The Turnback later this month. -JBH
The Turnback.
No writer really wants to talk about that.
This is the point where we want to abandon the work, think the work is horrible, or see no use in going for it.
It is crazy to think about something that you have worked so hard on that you would scrap! It happen more often than you think.
There are some things that you may have to scrap, and there are some things that you may have to write through.
Before you ‘turnback’, think of these three things:
1.) If I give this more time, can I write more?
2.) If I rewrite this, will it be better?
3.) Why do I want to scrap this? If so, tell yourself why.
Before your delete the work, ask yourself these questions.
With Love & Ink,
If writers are honest, we will tell you that there are instances which provoke us to stop.
If we are honest, we will tell you of the instance where people didn’t believe in us, deterred us, and wanted us to “do something safer.”
Yet, we do not.
Yet, every writer–whether they are traditionally published, or selling books out of the back of their trunks–have stories (multiple stories!) about how they almost quite, should have quit, and secretly wished they had at points.
Which, brings us to this idea–or warning.
THE TURN.
“The Turn” is the pivot point by which writer must confront in order to realize what they have in the tank to finish, not just a work–but this journey.
“The Turn” will teach you more than success ever will.
JBHarris Writing Services 