Shane told me to keep it simple

Welcome to the Rocky Ridge Retreat!

Shane told me to keep it simple, be encouraging, keep it upbeat.

Keep it short.

Finally he gives me a direction I can take!

Here’s the thing, writers write.

In my experience, people who write can’t NOT write.

Oh, there are people who quit…I’ve known a few…but mostly they seem to just meander back to the computer before long. Because they can’t stop.

It’s not a THING you want to do. It’s the way your brain is wired. Or at least it is for me.

I’ve never really quit in all the years I’ve been writing, which is right around twenty years now.

I wrote for ten years before I got published and on that fateful day when I received my first contract, I had twenty finished books on my computer.

Since I sold that book I’ve gotten all but about five of those twenty books published and written about thirty more, if you count novellas as books…and I DO!!!

So there are two things you need to be a writer. 

ONE

The mindset, the love, the inner fire to write.

TWO

Craft

That’s it. One you have or you’re born with, or you discover within yourself. 

If you don’t have ONE then there is a very good chance you will never be a writer. There are famous people with books I suspect someone wrote for them, but that doesn’t make them writers.

TWO …that is every book, class, blog post, conference session…all of it. All you have to do to gain the skills. 

TWO you can learn. Hard work, but you can do it.

ONE you’ve either got it or you don’t.

So ask yourself AM I A WRITER??? And chances are, if you are here at this retreat, there’s a good chance you are.

If the answer is yes, the rest is just hard work, persistence, practice. Just like any skill…brain surgery, pitching a baseball, cutting hair, frosting a cake.

Think about how hard really good surgeons study, how many heads of hair a beautician cuts to get out of school, how many frosting roses someone messes up before they start looking right.

I read once I think is was Jerry West, hugely successful basketball player, saying he spent two hours a day working on his weaknesses.

I remember reading once that the top 100 tennis players in the world, by all measurements, served at the same mph, returned hits at the same speed, were as fast on their feet as all the other 100 players.

So what’s the difference? It’s all mental. Completely mental. The difference between Serena Williams and some also ran 100^th seed is completely and totally mental.

Mary 'Cowgirl' Connealy

So practice your weakness, practice your mental toughness when you get hard news of a contest loss or an editor or agent rejection.

But write.

Writers write.

And you’re a writer!