Wednesday, October 14, 2009

What do writers do? They write!

Well, the grades came in on the group presentation, and I did remarkably well. The teacher gave out individual grades to all the group members, and I got 89%! That's fabulous, considering all the frustrating things that went wrong. The other members didn't do so well... Mostly they were hurt by not filling up as much time as they should have. The silly thing about that is that we had a stop watch sitting up on the podium to use, and two of the group members didn't even use it. I was so glad that I did because I know I would have gone well over my time limit. The first time I looked at the timer, it was almost time to stop. I wish they all would have used it so that they could have gotten better grades...!

I'm so relieved to have that over with! It frees up my mind to think about other things for a while. My communications teacher was talking today about how people say they're not good at things and then stop there. "I'm just not good at writing," insist many of his students, and yet they don't take the time to develop their writing abilities. He said it takes time and persistence to be good at things and much hard work. Which brings me to my greatest character flaw...

I tend to do nothing. It is my natural inclination to sit there imagining and dreaming... and doing nothing. I have great IDEAS and plenty of zeal, but such things don't do me any good unless I simply stop dreaming and get to work. So I want to be a writer! That doesn't mean anything. I really have got to make my novel a regular daily priority in my life, or I won't ever finish it. Working on it something for a few minutes every now and then is pathetic and I can never develop my writing skills in such a leisurely fashion! It is time to pull myself up and to BE more than I have been.

After all, a writer is someone who writes, not somehow who thinks about writing.