Be Stubborn

If somebody tells you that you don't have enough skills to write a story, prove to that person that you can. Study, research, and learn. Then write the best story you can. When you get the story published, there won't be any need to tell that person, "I told you I could." You have shown you could.

Notes

Lately, all I'm writing are to-do lists for school and work, but as I look next to my computer, there is a pile of yellow sticky notes, and even a couple of napkins, with writing all over them. It seems that my creative writing has, for the time being, taken on the size and shape of my to-do lists. Perhaps I need to feel some sort of control and tightness to my ideas. Perhaps as school goes on and I fall into a routine, my ideas can expand onto larger writing tablets, or even into a file on my computer. For now, I just need something tangible to show myself that I'm still open to the world around me, like this photo of my schoomate's daughter. Ideas are everywhere. Doesn't she want to make you write a story? Perhaps I'll just jot a few words down on a post-it...

Read and Write

The standard advice I give to people young and old who want to be authors is to read as much as you can and write as much as you can. It sounds trite, but really, it is the most important way to improve your skills.
What amazes (and saddens) me is how seldom I follow my own advice. School visits, the business side of publishing, day-to-day chores swallow my time, and weeks (or months) go by without me having written anything new (other than my daily journal entries). How often do I need to remind myself to write, write, write? And read, read, read? Obviously, I have to remind myself of this a lot.