Don't Lose the Magic

When I was a little girl there was nothing I loved more than curling up on the couch with a good book. And when I wasn't reading, I'd literally spend hours just daydreaming my own fantastic tales that usually involved a hero suspiciously like me sucked into various fantasy worlds of my own making. I wrote my first short story at the age of seven. It wasn't like I had a horrible childhood I needed to escape from or anything. It just plain made me happy.


So it doesn't seem all that surprising that I ended up coming full circle. I suppose looking at it, becoming a writer was inevitable. Of course now that I have claimed it as a profession I do/have done more than just write. I also blog and tweet (what some call a social media platform), query and submit, critique and accept critique, attend conferences and workshops, and so on. 


I don't often talk about the negative sides of writing. I get it though. Sometimes writing gets hard. It's a long, stumbly kind of road sometimes - okay most of the time. There are *gasp* inevitable rejections. And despite the overwhelmingly positive attitude of this community, I know that psychologically those hurtful moments, even few and far between, stick to us in a way a million compliments never could. 


The seven year old me wouldn't understand any of that of course. And that's my point. I write because I love that magical feeling. The same one that I had when I used to imagine the day away. I write in the hopes that I will touch someone else's life the way those authors touched mine. And ultimately that's what matters, that's why I do it, and that's why I will continue. 


So friends, if you find yourself getting down for one reason or another, remind yourself why you did this to begin with. And then ask yourself if your life would be the same without it. If like me, the answer is a big fat "NO!" then don't quit. Keep doing it. Because the negative will pass. But the magic will always be there waiting.
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