Writing Friends

Have been in a funk the last couple of days mostly about my writing (yes, there are other things - but this is a writing column.) I've seen this from my writer friends too. Where we think our stuff is terrible. That we can't write. That it's all garbage and why do we do this to ourselves.

And yet some of those same friends are on best seller lists and have agents or editors who believe in them beyond doubt. And they feel this way on occasion too.

So why *do* we do this to ourselves?

For me--and a lot of other writers--it's because we can't *not* write. There is something in us that drives us to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and write. Yes, I put it off for years as I was busy raising my family - but it was always there, lurking in the background. And I have the notebooks full of short stories or ideas to prove it. It is that undefinable "something" that has us look at a headline, a person, a situation and say "what if..."

I am a writer.

But there are days when I doubt that. When the internal critic laughs at me as I strive to find the right words. When all I can hear are the cutting words of my first college English prof.

The trick is overcoming those times and still write. And it is those times when writing friends matter the most because they know. They understand. And they support. As I do when they go through these periods.

And those are the best times of all.
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Progress - 50 pages edited
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Birthdays: Edgar Lee Masters, William Ernest Henley, Robert Irwin, Willy Russell, Melanie Thon

Tips and Teasers: You’re a master spy, ala James Bond. What kind of interesting tools does Q provide you with? What are you going to save the world from?

Thought for the day: “A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought; there is visible labor and there is an invisible labor.” – Victor Hugo