This is going to be a quick one, Patsy.

But I thought since I use this place so frequently to talk about what I’ve learned or what’s going on adjacent to my writerly pursuits, I thought I’d try to put some stuff in stone. You know, a thing that frequent readers of my site can come back to, again and again, as a way to identify that this is in fact me writing and not some Russia-created bot programmed to look and sound like me.

Unless that’s just what I want you to think…

Plugging in my ports right now, I want to say what the hardest part about being a “writer” actually is. I put the word “writer” in quotations because I know a lot of people in my shoes, the try-hards, the ones in the query trenches, may not feel comfortable referring to themselves as that yet, so that’s for them. The hardest part about being a writer is: not being able to talk about what you’re actually accomplishing.

As in, you work, alone, by yourself, for months on end, scraping away at a story, page after page, line after line, word after word, and at the end of the day? What do you have?

1/370th of a book done, that is if your book is 370 pages done.

And that’s it? Like, if you’re looking for a something to hang your hat on that’s a pretty small hook. Now, I know there are those days when the words flow like wine at a suburban mom’s book club meeting and there’s other days where you’re as dry as what the government wanted prohibition to be like and not what it was actually like, but for the most part, it’s little steps. Little goals. Little achievements.

And when people ask you about it, all you can say is, “It’s good? It’s good. It’s going to be good. There’s like this one page…I mean, this one line that was good and…I wrote for an hour today? An hour. That’s a good long time to write. And it was good? It was fine. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

It’s hard for me to talk about.

…

This may or may not be a direct result of my progress writing Project: DEED.

Nope.

Not at all.

Everything is fine.

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Thanks for reading,

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