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Little by Little

 



I thought it was a long road to write Mary's story. It felt like the years of not sitting down and just pondering it off and on almost made the story impossible. And now, here I am selling copies of her story and writing about characters I didn't even imagine until earlier this year.  

I'm at the place in the story where I've written several chapters and there's a natural ending on the horizon. Instead of charging forward and writing that ending. Instead, I'm going back and reading the story all the way through as it's been written. I'm catching some typos and things like that but I'm also getting a better feel of if I actually like Chris's story or not. 

Last night, after I had closed down my computer I wondered if this story was any good. And then I realized that if I didn't like it, if it was no good, then I could just toss all that has been written so far and start over. It was a good reminder that stories don't just magically poof into existence one day, they are lots of little choices in little moments to say yes to the work of putting word to page. And if I've done it once, I can surely do it again. And there are really only a few ways to get better at writing and one of them is sitting down and writing. Another one is to read good writing, and then there's editing, which can make almost anyone into a pretty good writer. 

All that is to say that even though I'm terribly scared of writing stories that no one will enjoy reading or learn anything from, I'm still doing the little by little work that turns minutes into stories. And I hope that your little by little work is proving fruitful and enjoyable.

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