Reasons to keep writing:

• it brings you joy
• somebody has to take care of the characters
• you have a lesson to teach
• it gets you through everyday life
• there's people excited for the next chapter
• to provide hope for yourself and others
• if you don't tell the story, no one else will
• it's a way of expressing yourself / what you go through
• to make yourself and others feel less alone
• people adore your writing
• your characters would miss you if you left
• nobody can take your place / write your stories for you
• to leave something behind to be remembered by
• to release your emotions
• to inspire other people

whatever was left, that was ours for a while.

sunrise - louise glück

write that book. publish that blog. apply for that job. dye your hair. cut your bangs. pick up that hobby that you’ve always wanted to try. wear that outfit that you loved but were too afraid to put on in public. life is way too short. be whoever you want to be, and do whatever you want. stop waiting for the right moment, because there will never be one. sometimes you just gotta say fuck it, and do it! live your life the way you want, and don’t ask for anyone’s approval.

• because it’s a puzzle no one else will ever arrange the same way as you.
• because there are ideas that simply won’t come to you until you write down the wrong words.
• because all the bad scenes are the bones of the wonderful scenes.
• because someone will love it: someone will read it once, and twice, and thrice; someone will ramble to you about the complexity of it; someone will doodle your characters out of love; someone will find it in exactly what they were looking for with or without knowing it.
• because they have things to say, your characters. they’ve told you all those secrets and they have more to tell you, if you will listen.
• because you love it even when you don’t; even when it drives you mad or when it accidentally turns into apathy; even when you think you’re doing it all wrong; you love it, and it loves you back.
• because you can get a treasure even from things that go wrong; because if a story crumbles down you can build a shinier one on the same spot; because you won’t know where it will take you until it takes you there.

Having just finished my first year of my screenwriting masters program, i wanna share this thing that I was told at the very start of the year that I have not been able to stop thinking about

they got all 28 of us screenwriters in a room on like the second day and straight up told us—

“you will suffer for your entire career if you make this into a competition.” 

they told us that, while we might like the write similar things, like in the same genre, or same settings—we’d never be in competition, simply because we were all different people.

from our big differences in life experience and in personality, down to our smaller differences in story preferences and writing style, it all made everything we all did unique.

and while we were all one of a million people trying to achieve the same goal of making writing a career—individually we were the only ones who could tell our stories. 

You are the only one who can write like you, who can draw like you, who can cosplay like you, who can sing like you, who can make art like you. Don’t ruin the love you have for your craft by comparing yourself to others, by putting yourself in competition with them just because you want to be “the best”.

And finally, here’s the tough love part that we all got reminded of constantly—

The moment you decide you are better than everyone, is the moment you fail. Because you will have closed yourself off to valuable critique. You will have inflated your ego so big that the second you get rejected you’ll spiral. You will have become so high and mighty that one day you’ll look around and realize you have pushed all of your peers, and your entire support system, away. 

There literally is no “best”. There is only growing with others as artists, supporting your peers, and telling your story in the way only you can. That’s how you succeed.  

askpolly