I have come here...well, firstly, actually, to gush to you all my immense gratitude and blushy-ness about just how awesome it is that DL Hammons gave me the Silver Lining award on his
blog. Whoa. WHOA. My blog has an award.
I have an award! Thank you, DL! I am so happy you are one of my few followers and that you appreciate the blog.
Which brings me to my next lesson. And confession. My confession is this: I have not written all weekend. Defamation, shock, alarm. If you gasped and tsk-tsked me right now, you'd have a right. I'd like to say other things got in the way and that life is too busy, but they didn't, and it wasn't. I just...didn't write. I thought about it. I thought about my ideas for scenes. I thought about my own advice and how crucial it is to always write to keep up momentum. Buuuttt....I apparently thought catching up on American Idol was more important.
But that was only the confession. Are you ready for the lesson? Okay. Here it comes.
I forgive myself. Oh, wait, that's a lie. Hold on....yep. Okay. Now I forgive myself. Because people need breaks, too. You should write a lot. You should think about writing a lot (at least if you want to take writing seriously and aren't just doing it for a hobby). But if you don't - and, for that matter, if you don't do anything you were 'supposed' to do - the best and most productive thing to do is forgive yourself.
I didn't write this weekend. Under normal circumstances, I might beat myself up: Oh, Jamie. You didn't write again. You want to be published, don't you? You want to be a success and outrun/outwrite all those people who ever had a fleeting thought that you weren't good/serious enough, don't you? You're going to fail if you don't write. What a failure. What a loser.
Normally. For days. Until finally I'd muster up the courage to put the pen to paper (or the fingers to the keys)...but by then, I'd have beaten myself up so much that it wouldn't even feel like an accomplishment. It's just what I should have been doing all along, right?
Well. Maybe. But perhaps I just needed a break. Perhaps this is me storing up all the potential energy so that, when I finally write, all the kinetic energy will burst and flow across the page into a masterpiece of prose and imagery and symbolism and...awesomeness. It could be an excuse, but I don't think so.
Just as no fumble or slip is too large, no accomplishment is too small. My blog got an award. Holy moley. It's not a big huge one, of course (Sorry, DL, but you aren't Nobel, you're just an awesome guy with an awesome blog), but I can still check it off my Metaphorical List of Accomplishments.
What did you accomplish today? Did you write 1000 words? What about 500? 50? Okay! Good for you! Holy crap, you did something! Sometimes it's hard to even eke out those few words, so, if it was, treasure them. Don't belittle them. They might even need work (no one does anything perfectly immediately, after all), but you still wrote them. You got them down, and they'll be there forever, barring any massive fire or hard drive failure (which would suck. I'm sorry if that happens. Please check your smoke detectors and virus protection).
Any small accomplishment is worth holding up and examining. You can even take out your accomplishments and polish them once in a while to make sure they shine. "Oh yeah, I did write that whole novel. Some people don't ever get to do that, and I did. Wow. I'm cool." or even "I wrote that scene just how I would have liked. I should be proud of myself."
Writing is tough stuff. So sometimes, you have to treasure the little stuff. Like blog awards.
