A Writer's Thanksgiving List

If you had the time and inclination yesterday to check in with social media between, say, the turkey dinner and dessert, you must have seen all the posts sharing what people were most thankful for.  Here is my writer’s list:

• ·Your journey is your own.  None of us can predict, when the first fleeting story idea comes to us, whether it will ever see publication. Perhaps like me, you have traveled a rocky path through elation and disappointment, success and failure.  It’s not for the faint of heart, but each journey is unique and incredibly rewarding.

• We travel in good company.  So many wonderful, incredibly talented, encouraging, challenging, loving people attend us along the way.  Fellow writers, industry professionals, readers – people who make the journey fun and meaningful, who are rich in experience and wisdom and willing to come alongside us.

• Print isn’t dead.  People are still buying books.  Honest-to-goodness books! Pick up a book, open to the middle and inhale.  Feel the pulse, listen for the heartbeat. It’s still living and breathing. 

• Ideas are endless.  You may struggle to find ideas, but as the world changes and new experiences are open to us, potential is created for new story ideas or for putting new spin on old ones.  Fresh discoveries are made every day.  The world has not 'arrived' yet.

• Technology is in hyper-drive.  Never has it been easier to do research, learn the craft, polish a manuscript, query an agent, increase your circle of influence, develop a social network, cyber-visit a location across the globe for setting, find the perfect photo of your character and back it all up in the cloud.  Sister, it’s a loooong way from making carbon copies on a typewriter. (Amazingly, it hasn't been so very long ago...)

• Self-publication is an option.   Writers no longer have to go the traditional route to get stories into the hands of readers.  Okay, there are hurdles and challenges, and money is involved, but it’s a possibility for those who choose it. 

• We have the great privilege of creating art.   The act of creation does something wonderful inside us.  It fills us and feeds us.  Read the Creation story in Genesis again and see the mixture of creative abandon and order described there.  Create art every day.

This is really just a beginning list, and we’d love to add your contributions.  What a great time to be a writer!