From the Editor:
The End of the Year
By Lazette Gifford
Copyright © 2009 by Lazette Gifford, All Rights Reserved
First, let me discuss the Email curse I seem to have
fallen under. Some email gets through to me. Some does not.
There is no rhyme nor reason to it. People at all steps along the
way cannot find the problem. So, at least for now, my lazette.net
email addresses seem to be iffy. I hope that it pulls out of it.
We have more NaNo articles
this issue. Many of us will be deep in the throes of literary
abandon by the time you read this issue. I am looking forward to a
couple days of writing insanity before I settle back into real-world
work mode again. How will I do this year? I don't know yet.
The outline I'm working on is giving me trouble, which makes me worry
about the book itself.
I won't let that stop me.
Maybe that's something that I take to extremes, but I've learned that
it's easy to make excuses to stop, step back, move more cautiously ...
and not get anywhere at all. With that in mind, I always move
forward and dare to try things, even when I'm not certain they will
work.
Writing is not a vocation
for the timid or for anyone with an excessive fear of failure.
Sometimes story plots will not work out. Sometimes beloved stories
will be rejected.
And sometimes ... sometimes
something odd comes to you in the middle of the night, or while you're
typing away on dull reports at work. It's a whisper about a story
that you could tell -- only you, because that whisper will not come to
anyone else. The story is yours and yours alone. You may
find references to other stories that sound like it, but they are not
your version. It's what you do with that bit of dream vision that
makes it all your own.
If you are too timid, or if
you fear that you will fail, you'll ignore the whisper. You'll
tell yourself you're not ready to write it, or it's derivative, or any
other number of excuses.
And eventually you will stop
getting the whispers. You'll no longer need to worry about failure
then, but you will have lost the chance to tell the stories that only
you can write. They're lost. No one else will ever write
them if you don't.
Dare to write your stories.
Don't make excuses. Know that they won't all be perfect.
Know that the more you write, the better you will become at it.
Leap in. Create
stories for the joy of writing them. Whatever happens afterwards
isn't important.
Have fun.
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