This started out as a catalog of all the things that went wrong with my writing in 2012. Instead, I'm going to take a somewhat more balanced approach and start by talking about the things that went right, and that I am thankful for.
First of all, my comrade-in-arms and dear, dear friend Bridget: thank you, thank you, thank you. Bridget's the one who is responsible for me getting back into writing, and whether she means to or not she always succeeds in pulling me back in whenever I start to feel down in the dumps and feel like quitting. We knew each other in high school, but only really became friends in my second year of college. She asked me if I was interested in writing; maybe she remembered that I had worked on the high school literary magazine back in the day. For whatever reason, I said "yes," even though at the time I hadn't been writing much, and hadn't written much even in high school. She told me about this cool thing called Nanowrimo, where the goal is to write a 50,000 word manuscript in the month of November. The rest is history, and a history that I look back on fondly. My work from that first Nanowrimo probably wasn't very good, but I can say this about it: I wrote with wild abandon and with enthusiasm. It's a small goal of mine to recapture some of that enthusiasm again, to write like I don't care, even if I do. Sometimes the best thing to do is just get the thing out on paper. Bridget's encouragement and her talk about her own projects has been the thing that has helped sustain me.
2012 was supposed to be the year we both completed manuscripts. This didn't actually happen. In my case, I think it was because at the time I was not completely committed to it. Writing a manuscript, I have learned, is something that you can't treat lightly. You don't have to be serious about it all the time, but you have to realize that it's not going to be a walk in the park. You have to be willing to slog through it, to sometimes work when you don't feel like it, to really work through the hard times.
You also need to be able to manage your time effectively. This is a skill that has to be actively developed, at least in my case.
I've also noticed that to really succeed at things, you have to want them. That's not to say I didn't want to write a manuscript in the past. I did want to write a manuscript, but the level of want wasn't high enough. It has to be the sort of thing that fills your heart. It has to be something like eating: if you don't do it, your day doesn't feel complete. It doesn't have to be all of your life; in fact, it probably shouldn't be all of your life. But if there's something you want to achieve, then make it a part of your life. It will be difficult at first; God only knows it's been difficult for me. But keep at it for a while, and really make it something important to you, a part of your day. And if you find that after you've done that for a while and you still don't enjoy it, even a little, then maybe it's time to consider how you got to this point in the first place.
As for me, I already know that I enjoy it. I am still working at making it a consistent part of my life though.
So let me say thank you once more to Bridget, and to all the other writers who have inspired me and reminded me of what is possible in this wide world of ours.
