Soldiers!
We all stand today united on separate battlefields, determined fire in our eyes and blisters upon our fingers. We bear the scars of rejection. We wear the medals of completed novels, or novels in progress, or novels barely begun.
Our foes are many. They come in uniforms of Exhaustion, Screaming Children, Day Jobs, Plot Holes, and Flat Characters, and Writer's Block. They bear the weapons of discouragement and lack of confidence and fear. But we bear the might of words! The power of the ideas and people and stories in our minds that will not be silenced!
The fight is fierce. We gain a territory of 500 or 2,000 words a day, only to have to retreat and erase many of those words. We scratch out our stories in the dead of night and early morning hours, with nothing but chocolate to sustain us. And each word we write, or change, or even erase only puts us closer to our goal of a completed novel. It is a joy, and it is a challenge many never dare to face, but we come to the fight day after day.
My brothers and sisters. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me! A day may come when the courage of writers fails, when we forsake our words and break all bonds of creativity, but it is not this day! This day we FIGHT!*
Ahem.
Okay. So maybe that was a little melodramatic. But writing can be a battlefield. Writing is HARD. Like so many things in life, it's full of contradictions of joy and anguish and fun and exhaustion and lots and lots of work. More than talent, maybe even more than that oft-mentioned perseverance, it takes COURAGE to face the page yet another day and keep pouring our souls onto it.
So, really, I wrote this battle speech for myself, I think. So that on the days when the pain and work of writing out-weigh the joy and fun of it, I can bolster my courage and determination to work hard.
And you know, my friends, I think we should have a battle cry, too. So here. I made this one for a friend, and for you. And for me. Feel free to spread it to the writers of the internet so we can scream it upon the battlefields of our novels and have the courage to win!
20 comments:
Go sister!
Writing is hard!! But awesome at the same time :)
lol
Thank You Shallee!!! :D
~Akoss
I call it a habit, a calling, a blessing, and a curse! Yes, it is all that and more!
Yay! Great post. :) Courage, and endurance! (With a side of pie or crepes or Bon Bons! I am in a sweet mood for some reason.) Love the graphic. Thanks for sharing! :)
I enjoyed reading every single word you wrote. Beautiful.
I definitely need a battle cry like this one right now. My day jobs and dissertation have forced me to set aside my fiction writing for far too long, and I miss it a lot.
That just made my day, (how devious of you to use Aragon, Ah that was so smart, why didn't I think of that?)anyway, I don't mind being melodramatic about it, writing is hard and sometimes crazy, I sure need me a fine battle cry.
That sums up my summer of querying! (And now my fall of querying...) Thanks for this post:)
I love this! Thank you so much! Now, off to write. :)
HaHaha! No worries, writers should be melodramatic. I loved it, made me feel like I had company in my madness. Write-on!
After reading your battle speech I had this overwhelming urge to cheer :)
Roar! (That's me on the battle lines with my laptop held high in the sky).
But for realz, writing is hard. And I have all sorts of scars. But there are those little victories that keep us going. Today I am having one of those few and far between victory days. Tomorrow I will go back to battle.
Off to write. Loved the post!
Nas
Wonderful thoughts, Shallee. One of the best parts about being a writer is that I get to compete with myself daily. That's also one of the hardest parts!
*Salutes Shallee* You got it, boss! :)
Ha! Enjoyed your post. Smiling, here! Yes, it's a definite battlefield. Good thing we have other writers for support, whew!
You're so right: It's a battlefield . . . but write on, girl. We're not gonna let the drudgery defeat us!
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