Writing Quote Wednesday: The World Needs Your Words

“The world needs you, and it needs your gifts. You must become generous with yourself again. But you will only become generous with yourself when you are able to release your fear of failure.” 

Life After Art: What You Forgot About Life and Faith Since You Left the Art Room by Matt Appling

In all of my critique groups, we’ve been talking about our paths. Are we on the right ones? We write, we struggle to write, we send things out, or we fear sending things out. We get rejected or ignored. No matter where we are in our journeys from the beginners to the multi-published, all of us are struggling with some aspect of our writing life.

It’s hard.

We struggle.

But I believe that all of us have talent. We all have that still, small voice inside of us that compels us to write.

A couple of months ago, my husband and I went to Lexington, VA for an anniversary weekend getaway. We ate a LOT of food and all of it was delicious. Some of it was expensive. The BEST and cheapest things I ate all weekend were doughnuts from PURE EATS. It’s a little dive in downtown Lexington with an eclectic menu and doughnuts that sell out quickly, almost as quickly as they come out of the oven.

These are not factory doughnuts. They don’t come out of a box at the grocery store. These are gourmet flavors, and an in-house person who makes them. I do not know the doughnut maker at Pure Eats, so bear with me as I assume what doughnut making might be like and how it relates to writing.

Chances are, to make a doughnut this good, you would have to have some failure along the way. The first batch of doughnuts could not have turned out perfect. These are works of art. They look like it and taste like it.

And I’m sure there is a process every time they attempt to perfect a new flavor. It’s like starting a new book. There is a dream of what the end product should be. But then there is the hard work and the multiple failures to get it there. Taking your work to your critique group is like having a taste test. It’s good, but you need to have a little more of this, a little less of that.

There might be some flavors that eventually get scrapped because they just don’t quite make the cut, but that doesn’t cause anyone to think that this pastry chef can’t make doughnuts.

So why do we beat ourselves up when one piece of writing just doesn’t turn out like we want it to? That doesn’t mean we lack talent or passion.

The world needs Pure Eats doughnuts. It makes Lexington a better place.

The world also needs my writing friends. Their words make a difference in my life and I can’t wait for the world to get to enjoy their words as much as I do.