Wednesday, October 2, 2013

"Everyone isn't bad, Mama!"

So I'm pretty excited.  I remembered to enter Wendy's weekly #5 Fiction writing contest last night and was a finalist (you can vote for me here) this time.  Sort of by default - it was a light entry night - but it proved something to me in a personal way that I will never forget.  Discipline pays off in writing.

Let me say that again.  "Discipline pays of in writing."

It's been that kind of week plus, despite not feeling well, I went to our regular kettlebell class, so the last thing I felt like doing when I got home was a creative writing exercise.  But entering this contest is what I have purposed to do.  "Just get something down." I told myself.  "You need the experience or you'll never be a finalist."

I sat down and wrote.  Anything else would be quitting.

Stephen King's book, "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft", touches on never giving up.  He describes coming home with his wife to a ratty apartment in a broken down car carrying a baby and a sick toddler (complete with SK description of the vomit that covered him) - knowing that she needed antibiotics and not even having money for food.  It was a low point, he said.  He'd been writing but without success.  He was on the verge of giving up on everything.  But there was an envelope waiting for them.  Inside was a check for more than he'd ever been paid for anything.  It covered the medicine, and dinner, and a new transmission.  It kept him going until "Carrie" exploded on the scene turning him into a sensation and one of the writing world's superstars.

No check for me.  No record breaking best seller.  Just a finalist in a small writing contest that I stumbled across.  Just a goal achiever who is perhaps a bit smugger than most of the world would think was appropriate, but any writer would completely understand.

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