Writers have time to get better

As a writer all I can do is what I can do at that particular place and time. Write what interests me, what gets me excited, what moves me. If I do less than that then I think it comes through in my writing. Anyway, where's the fun in doing less than that? But what I can do can always be more. I have time to make it more.

I try to learn, try to do what I do well better and try to do what I don't do as well better. I feel lucky that I'm a writer. I get to keep trying to write better until I can't write anymore. That's a gift. Think of being a professional athlete and the short run they have at doing what they love.

Writers have time to get better.

And you don't have to be the best writer in every way to be a good writer. In fact, even the great ones are not the best in every way. Good writers do some things very well and others maybe not so well. Some are very good with description or dialogue or characterization or...you name it. Find what you do well, what you love to do, and do it. And then try to do it better. And then try to improve the things you don't do as well.

We can get better. We have time.

You will never figure it all out. How fiction works. Why some novels come alive an others don't. Nobody has it figured out. That's a blessing and a curse. Some days it feels like a curse anyway. But it's a blessing. To be engaged, to be passionate, to love the process--in spite of the days when you hate it--, to love the mess of it all and finding order in that mess and shaping it into a story, is pretty damn awesome. And it goes on, this feeling, this struggle, a whole life because we can't ever "figure it out" completely.

So, I feel lucky. I have time to get better.