Red ink everywhere. If you’ve ever had your writing edited professionally, you’ve experienced the dread of opening the revised document for the first time. All the markup can be discouraging and overwhelming.
Many people write stories—but few achieve the uphill climb to publication. Aspiring writers look at how far they need to travel and start feeling so dismal that they’re tempted to quit. They worry that their work is poor and question their calling to authorship.
My writing sucks. No one likes it, and I can’t fix all the problems. I’ll never succeed. I should quit trying and find a “real” job I’m actually talented at. If you’ve been writing for any length of time, you’ve probably had doubts similar to the ones above. Writing can be a slog, and even when it’s exciting, discouragement may creep in.
The time for New Year’s resolutions has come and gone. Why are we talking about journaling now? Because, as a writer, you’ve probably noticed that it’s a fad on Instagram and contemplated joining in. Maybe you even started a journal but couldn’t keep it going.
Unproductiveness is a nasty little dragon that grows ginormous at the most inconvenient times. For instance, during the last week of NaNoWriMo, I was stuck on my story, so I decided to type up the portion I had handwritten and try to fix some of the problems. I hoped to complete the task before November 30th so I could still hit 50,000 words.
“I started a project a few years ago and wrote a chunk…but I never finished it. What should I do now?” I’ve heard this tale from every writer ever. We’ve all had a project sputter and die at some point in our journey. When we take a break for too long, restarting the engine can be difficult. The abandoned story probably bores us, and we may have trouble remembering the timeline and the different character motivations that propelled it.
“You wrote a great story, but it needed a proofreader.” No one likes to hear that their writing is full of mistakes. Whether we’re submitting to a website or writing a story for family, we slave over our words. We don’t want our masterpieces diminished by typos.
I was walking to the lake near my house, praying, when I looked up and saw the giant standing in my way.
“May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.” (Psalm 19:14 NIV) This is one of my favorite verses, and I love to pray it over my writing. Recently though, I hit a brainstorming block that left me winded and unsure how to move forward. I swung from feverishly scribbling notes to mapping out the story on a whiteboard, hoping that a different view would help.
It is a generally acknowledged fact that writing takes forever. We wish we could skip the blood, sweat, and ink part of the process to get to the shiny published product. Publication becomes a higher priority as we grow older and college, job, and life choices loom before us.
