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.
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,
My first turn was soon after the first time I published my first book of poetry: LOVE SONGS OF THE UNREQUITED.
I wasn’t taught alot about marketing, making a social media presence, or developing an audience. Yet, all the great things that are happening to me at this point was trial and error.
Sometimes that is great–sometimes that is a detriment.
Yet when my first book wasn’t an instant smash, I could have stopped. But I didn’t.
I could have stopped when my first book signing that was self-funded, wasn’t as great as I wanted–I could have stopped. But I didn’t.
Not because I’m not talent, but because it was hard. It is hard.
It is that hardness, that difficulty, that is enough to make anyone stop. Yet, I did not. I could not! I wanted to see how this would shake out! I wanted to see what could happen. The curiosity of the continue make me think that I might be able to do this if I could just keep going. If I could figure this out, if I could make this my own–if I could just figure out HOW to keep going–then I would.
With my Turn–I had to push past doubt to keep going.
The Turn will demand that you believe the fear–or the fact (that you might be able to do this if you keep going).
Dear Writer:
Write.
Don’t write.
But yet, there are consequences to one–and success for the other.
Consider carefully.
With Love & Ink,
JBHarris Writing Services 