Hey, you, writer feeling blue! I feel it sometimes, too.

Cheesy rhymes aside, though, I want to make a little pep talk speech that both of us can refer back to when we need it.

So, listen up!

Did you write much today? Even a little? Every word counts, you know. Not even one? Well, guess what, that’s okay, I haven’t wrote a single thing in days. Okay… maybe weeks. But that doesn’t mean I’m not making progress in my work… or as a writer.

Let’s think about the art of writing for a second. We type, we backspace, we hit return. Or we backspace… a lot. Maybe all the way to the top. But, you know, that’s part of the practice. Studies have proven that success only comes from failures. Little fails, big fails, moderately sized fails… A successful end product will only come from ashes of what once was. Emily Dickinson herself said all 1,800 of her poems were created from the ashes of longer poems. Another note–she viewed each of her pieces as total failures in her lifetime, but today she is one of, if not the, most widely known and studied poets of all time!

But, you know, not everyone is an Emily Dickinson. I’m certainly not. My name doesn’t even start with E. And I don’t write poetry deeply rooted in thought, I just write immature stuff that sometimes makes people laugh. But that’s important, too, and every genre you pick to write in has a contribution to the world. Trust me–I’m one of many who would rather read something simple and entertaining than an epic about the meaning of life’s journey before bed.

And, another thing–don’t compare yourself to everyone else. I do it all too much, too. I get it–some writers have awards out the wazoo and millions of dollars earned to prove their success. True, I envy them, too. But then I start to wonder, when it really comes down to the word-by-word paragraphs in their books, what makes them any better than mine? It’s all literally strings of combinations of words, and words are just strings of combinations of sounds, and sounds just come from moving your tongue and mouth in a certain way. Who’s to say the way I move my tongue is inferior to the way a billionaire does?

Although we’d all love to make a living at creating art, we also should know that it is totally possible to get there… as long as we work hard.

But hard work doesn’t come instantly, it takes time just like majority of everything else does. It takes a combination of, get this, working hard and playing hard. Seriously. You will only get extreme carpet burn on your hind end if you scoot from the couch to the wall and back all day every day. You know what I’m saying? You have to take breaks, and lots of them. Your work when you do work, then, will be so much more efficient and, more importantly, enjoyable!

So, are you on a break now? Take it with pleasure, and take it as long as you need. I mean it–as long as you need. People that say you need to write a minimum amount of words every single day? Yeah, that’s a lie and a recipe for disaster for most minds on earth. So, if you’re on Mars like me, take Monday off. Heck, take a month off. Or a year to study wildlife abroad.

Above all, keep yourself relaxed. Enjoy your writing time. Don’t push yourself overboard. And remember why you came to writing in the first place… that may be the cheesiest line of all, but chewing on cheddar is how the king came to power.

I just made that last-last line up, but guess what? I had fun doing it. And that’s why I came to write this post to begin with.

–Kari