Good morning, NaNoWriters.
Congratulations on a successful week of writing! Even if you, like me, have logged in a lonely "0" word count once or a few times this week, that's a form of success, too! We're still in the game!
This morning I am reading "If You Want to Write" by Brenda Ueland. She is very encouraging to beginning writers. She says "Everybody is talented, original, and has something important to say."
I love her sassy attitude toward grammar teachers and writing critics. She reminds readers to think of when we were children and put on plays for each other and for our families and neighbors. How we spent days putting it together, and how, really, the plays and costumes were very interesting and imaginative.
But then we arrive at school and our writing, our creativity, becomes a vehicle for learning grammar and punctuation, (which isn't be so bad, except that seems to become its only reason for existence). Then off we go to high school and especially, later, to college, where teachers write "trite, clichéd" in big red letters on our essays or short stories.
And we are no longer those confident children excitedly sharing our thoughts, beliefs, and truths with the world. We've become fearful of rejection and ridicule; we're afraid of being a cliché. So we stop writing or become “frigid” writers—not writing what we feel.
Brenda Ueland is right: Everybody is talented, original, and has something important to say.” My prayer for you as you continue with NaNoWriMo is to be confident in what you have to say and Just Write. Forget those grammar teachers and critics who have influenced your internal critic, and do the work God has given you—writing for His glory. Even if sometimes you have to log in a “zero” for the day, log it in with a sense of accomplishment that you are still in the game!
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