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I am a great admirer of my own writing.

I’m never going to tell you that you have to love EVERY little thing about EVERY thing you write, but you should want to love what you do. If you don’t, then why are you writing that story?

A lot of advice being thrown around regarding writing, especially during NaNoWriMo, is centered around writing YOUR story, the story that makes you happy. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy-see: #GroundhogOne is a story I love, but it’s really difficult to write, y’all. But the sense of pride you feel after accomplishing something or figuring out the trick that makes the story work or realizing what your writing is the ultimate of ultimate plot twists is the GREATEST feeling.

But you don’t get those feelings if you don’t persevere.

You must persevere, you must keep going and writing, or you’re never going to grow as a writer, and you’re probably not going to love what you’re doing as much as you should. A great majority of us are NOT full-time writers. That’s a really difficult goal to reach (not impossible, but difficult), and if you don’t love what you’ve chosen as your hobby (or second job, or whatever it is you want writing to be), then why do it? If it’s just as trying as your day job that you may or may not like, then you’re not giving yourself something to do that lets you express yourself and be free to enjoy your craft.

Enjoyment is massively important, especially in the creative pursuits.

And if you find yourself not enjoying what you’re doing, then you need to take a step back and figure out what went wrong. And that means that you must understand that you must look at your work critically. Only someone who can critique their own works can make their work great, and determine what needs to be cut or changed in order to put the story back on track. It takes time and it’s not easy. And that’s not to say that you have to cut hundreds and thousands of words or scenes or content. Content can ALWAYS be reused and repurposes (NEVER DELETE YOUR WORK PEOPLE). Pick and choose what does and doesn’t work, and go from there. Take your time. You have all the time in the world to make the story what you want it to be.

Also, never delete your work. I accidentally deleted the first draft of the #WhoIsTalyaNightingale novel, and the realization was DEVASTATING. And it was still devastating, even though I already decided that the way I was writing the story was going to change, and change drastically. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t pieces from that original incarnation that I could take and put into what became the #WhoIsTalyaNightingale novel. No one likes to start a project from scratch (which is why I’m struggling a bit through NaNoWriMo at the moment, but we’ll talk about that on Thursday during What I Wrote This Week), and there were probably scenes and pieces of dialogue that I missed from my accidental press of the Delete button. Obviously, I got through it and make it work (two years and 94,000 words later), but that doesn’t mean that that night wasn’t one of the WORST.

As always, here’s to a productive week of NaNo-ing or just writing, whatever you’re doing.

*#MondayMotivation quote found on my Pinterest Board: Inspirational Quotes About Writing

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