In Salt Lake City where I live I have a few friends that show me their writing and ask for advice. One of them showed me something last night that I thought was really good. It showed great imagination, and I was really entertained by it. I asked him, "Why don't you write more? This could easily be turned into a short story or a novella."
He said, "I have several problems that stop me from writing a complete story. The first is I lack courage to put my writing out there for just everyone to read. The second is that I keep adding to a story and my brain goes wild with all the things I want to do that I'm just out of control and the story becomes a complete hot mess."
It made me think how special all of us are that actually have written "the end" to a project; that manage to see something through to its ultimate finish. And I became really appreciative of that. Lately, I've kind of had this attitude that authors are as common as grains of sand on a beach. But now, I'm not so sure.
So if any of you have been in the same frame of mind that I sometimes find myself in...the one that says "everyone is writing a book," then I want you to step back and remember the story of the guy I just told you about. Everyone is in fact NOT writing a book. And some people who may be born storytellers may never finish one because they have mental "road blocks" in their mind that keep them from realizing a dream. What we manage to just "power" through is an impossible task for others.
As published authors, we are more than just a sum of our word count and our pages. We are people who complete what we start. We are people who manage to tame the conflicting ideas into a cohesive storyline that can be understood by others. And we are all people who have the courage to put our work in front of others to be judged over and over again.
And THAT is in fact nothing to be insecure about.
When I think about the great writers who have died and realize that they will never tell me another story like the ones that deeply touched me, I am sad. But I am also grateful that they had all of the things that made it possible for them to put their story in front of us. If David Eddings didn't have courage, I would have never been touched by the story of Belgarion of Riva. If Anne McCaffery couldn't sort out the hot mess of her mind to finish a book, I would never have met Moretta, Dragon Lady of Pern.
If you think about it, there are a lot of conditions that need to be met before a book lands in front of you on a desk or on your ereader. And that's pretty special, and it's one reason why I think the greatest crime ever committed in history was the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.
All of those stories lost because ignorant savages saw no value or even contemplated what it takes to write a book. And the world has paid for it ever since.
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