The HEA Cafe

So, here it is the 26th of the month and I’m right on time (if you don’t count that it’s late in the day) with my monthly post on motivation.

I was having a chat today on IM with RWA Online member (and my American Title sister) Michele Ann Young, and we were talking about throwing away words. Pages and pages of words. And it occurred to me, that no matter how sad and useless that always seems (and how much we rail against it) it’s okay to do that because writing is never wasted. Even when we’ve spent three days on a chapter that no longer has any use, or two years on a book that will never see the light of day, as frustrating as this can be, writing isn’t wasted.

It all goes back to something one of my professors said in college. He was a history professor and a bestselling published writer (not a common combination to be sure) who had written the book Nine Hours to Rama. (You might remember the movie they made out of it.)

I remember asking him for advice one day. It was the usual question from a young and impatient novice, something in the vein of “how do you write a book?” But his answer was gold. At the time, I thought he wasn’t taking me seriously. Finally, all the how-to books later, all the workshops later, all the critiques later, all these years later I understand the wisdom of his advice.

“Well,” he said, “you have to write a million words.”

So go forth and write.

Gina
—–
The Raven’s Revenge coming out in print in June!
From The Wild Rose Press
(and it only took about 1.1M words to get there)

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