WRITING IS NOT A SPRINT BUT A MARATHON

Lara Schiffbaur 
 laraschiffbauer.com

and I were talking on Twitter last night and this morning -- hard to do with so few characters!

We were talking about the struggles of staying the course in our writing

Lara:

Thanks for the nice blog comment. Life is what it is, and I'm grateful for the good. We'll see where writing leads us, huh?

 Maybe nowhere, maybe somewhere--but at least we have company! That's something to be happy about.

Me:

 It is not the destination but the journey that is rewarding -- at least I keep telling myself that! 


It is hard to keep motivated in our journey.  I am happy for all the successes happening to our writing friends ...

yet it can sometimes seem as if we are lagging farther and farther behind.



"My older brother was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. 

 We were out at our family cabin, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, 

surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. 

Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird."
 
-- Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird


That is what we must do in our writing: persist -- bird by bird, word by word. 



"Talent is long patience."
-- Gustave Flaubert


We must be in it for the long haul, patiently sanding our prose, steadily building the house of our novel brick by brick, paragraph by paragraph.

Which is why I am against NaNo ... Writing is not a sprint -- it is a marathon.

I understand this is the microwave age, 

but research how long famous authors of the past and the present took to finish a novel.  


It is not a month.  


And our writing success, should it ever come, will not be achieved overnight.  

Winter sometimes seems as if it will never end.


But no matter your winter, spring will come.


 
"We write to expose the unexposed. 

 Most human beings are dedicated to keeping that one door shut. 

 But the writer's job is to see what's behind it, to see the bleak unspeakable stuff, 

and to turn the unspeakable into words - not just into any words but, if we can, into rhythm and blues. 

You can't do this without discovering your own true voice,

 and you can't find your true voice and peer behind the door 

and report honestly and clearly to us if your doubts are reading over your shoulder."
 
-- Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird


Want to know how to become a good writer?

 Read wide. 

Write your heart.  

Live to the fullest. 

How do you think of your writing at the moment?