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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