You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair - the sense that you can never completely put on the page what's in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.
~Stephen King (from On Writing)
Is that brilliant or what?! Don't you just love Stephen King? We aren't asked to be reverent or politically correct or funny or anything else - he just asks us to be serious about our craft. I think most of us are already serious - painfully serious, even.
We are serious about our craft, about learning and growing in order to better our skills. I'm proud of us. I'm proud of our sharing of information. I'm proud of our questions and answers and problem solving for one another. I'm proud of the way we cheer for those successes while we wait (not-always-so-patiently) for our own.
Stephen King tells us,
Is that brilliant or what?! Don't you just love Stephen King? We aren't asked to be reverent or politically correct or funny or anything else - he just asks us to be serious about our craft. I think most of us are already serious - painfully serious, even.
We are serious about our craft, about learning and growing in order to better our skills. I'm proud of us. I'm proud of our sharing of information. I'm proud of our questions and answers and problem solving for one another. I'm proud of the way we cheer for those successes while we wait (not-always-so-patiently) for our own.
Stephen King tells us,
This isn't a popularity contest, it's not the moral Olympics, and it's not church. But it's writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can't or won't, it's time for you to close the book and do something else. Wash the car, maybe.
You gotta love it!
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