You CAN do it, if you keep at it

Today was a good reminder that there is a light at the end of the writing tunnel.

Yesterday, I had a terrible writing day. Couldn’t focus, couldn’t get past a scene I was stuck on, couldn’t figure out what needed to happen next in the story. After a few hours of frustration, I tried to distract myself by working on the blurb for my next book. But blurbs are always torture (ask any author—they’re universally considered the worst part of the entire process of writing and publishing a book). I only managed to jot down a few terrible, disjointed phrases before throwing in the towel and wallowing in my failure for the rest of the night.

This morning I wasn’t feeling any better about any of it. But I sat down to work and tried anyway. And what do you know, it started to get better. Not right away. I had to work at it for a while, feeling miserable and discouraged. But I kept at it, and suddenly it got a little easier. I had an idea for how fix one small thing. And then another small thing. And that lead me to a way to fix a bigger thing.

Before I knew it, I’d thrown out one whole troublesome chapter that didn’t need to be there, edited two others that did, and sketched out four new ones where previously there’d just been a big question mark in my outline. Go me!

Feeling buoyed by my successes, I decided to tackle that blurb again. And again, it totally sucked at first. I had no ideas, and everything I wrote down was total crap. But gradually, through perseverance, it started to come together. I came up with a sentence that didn’t completely suck. And another one. And another. Until I had that whole damn blurb written. Ha! So there.

Anyway, the point of all this is to say that it’s easy to get worn down by the bad days and feel like that’s all you’ll ever have. But if you stick with it, and keep trying, eventually, bit by bit, it will get better. Maybe not all at once. Maybe not today. But one day. One bit at a time.

So don’t give up, writer friends. Or non-writer friends. Because this applies to so many things in life. It’s easy to get discouraged, and it’s hard to keep trying anyway. But the payoff for all that trying is out there waiting for you. It’s just around the corner. If you keep putting one foot in front of the other, eventually you’ll get there.

And there is a great place to be!