Good Morning World

Head is starting to feel more normal again. Janice is starting to feel more normal again. (Well, as normal as Janice ever gets. Heh.)

Today is beautiful. Last night was cold.

Okay, well, cold by California standards. It was down into low 50's, maybe even high 40's around here.

I hope that means the hot weather won't come back (until next year, of course)...but I'm sure not holding my breath.

Everybody...have a great and wonderful day. :)

Confidence

One quality I've been struggling to develop as a writer for a long time is confidence. People who have been on my FL for a long time have seen me struggle and fail with this concept many times. I've longed for it, cried over it, fought for it.

And, yet, it snuck up on me while I wasn't watching. Only for me, confidence is kind of like a quiet peace of mind with my writing. A growing relationship with it. A realization that I've grown a lot and made a lot of progress and that maybe I've known more than I thought I did, but it was always easier to believe someone else than to look inside for the answers.

I wasn't able to look inside for the answers. I didn't have them. I was too busy comparing myself to others and allowing them to intimidate me or tell me where I was lacking. (In the past, I've made acquaintance with many writers--mostly wannabe--that were sure they were right about everything. I didn't have the confidence to stand up for myself around them.)

And, if they were confident they were right, that meant that I had to be wrong, right?

Wrong.

Everyone has their own path. Everyone has their own type of writing. Everyone has their own voice and their own relationship to their writing. None is right, and none is wrong.

I know that now.

It doesn't make my writing perfect. I still have a lot to learn. Maybe I have a long way to go. Maybe I don't. I don't know yet cause I'm not there.

But, I have my voice and my characters and my stories and I love writing. I want to continue to learn and grow. I KNOW I can do it because I'm willing to open myself to learning and growing.

But, I have confidence now, where I didn't before. I have confidence because I deserve confidence. I work hard at my writing. I work really hard at my writing. I write when I have nothing left inside because writing is what's important to me. I work hard to learn. I work hard to have faith. I HAVE FAITH.

In what?

I have faith that my writing has merit. I have faith that I will always be a storyteller. I have faith that I will always continue to learn and grow as long as I keep an open mind. I have faith that I will always write--any time I can write, as many words as I can write--and that, because of that, I will continue to grow and improve.

I am a writer. I have confidence in that.

Sure, I'll have bad days, when the world tells me I suck at everything. Maybe I'll listen sometimes. Maybe I'll learn not to listen at all.

But, I know I'm doing better because yesterday, I confronted a situation that, back in June, before I started working seriously on this problem, would have sent me sniveling and crying to a corner. This time, it only fazed me for maybe 10-15 minutes and didn't even devastate me at all. I just shrugged, turned my back on it and KEPT GOING!!!

I am so proud of me.

I am a writer. And, I will always be a writer...whether I'm ever a success by publishing standards or not.

Slowing Down

Whew! I went non-stop today. Body is slowing down; brain slowed down earlier.

We still wrote, though. Now we're going to sleep.

We're still hoping to finish Dawn of Destiny this week. Making progress. Lots and lots of progress.

Getting repetitious. I think that means I'm tired. :)

Dawn of Destiny 2,134 words today

139,000 total words to date

139,000 / 145,000 (95.0%)

Word Count Progress for October 2005:

9,290 / 62,000 (14.0%)