Are You Thankful For Your Writing?
By Jacob Krueger
On this Thanksgiving Holiday, I’d like to invite you to take a moment to ask yourself the following question:
What are you thankful for in your writing?
So often, we spend our time criticizing ourselves, searching for what is wrong, and what can be improved in the words we write. And certainly there is value in that part of the process. But it’s important to remember that the real key to becoming the writers we want to be lies in identifying what we love.
When you identify on the things you love about your writing, you shift your focus away from the things you lack, and onto the wonderful gifts you already have.
In this way, you give yourself a foundation upon which to build, open yourself up to the opportunities in your writing, and invest yourself with the hope and excitement that will carry you through to the end. So take a moment today, think about your writing, and write down the things you most love about it. Think about your process. What about it makes you happy?
Look at a scene you’ve written or a character you’ve created. What do you most connect to? What’s a line of dialogue you’re thankful to have discovered? A theme you’re thankful to have explored? A character you’re glad to have taken on a journey? Or an obstacle you’re grateful to have wrestled with and overcome? Get specific about all the things you’re thankful for. And then, if you’d like, share some of them with us and with your friends by posting what you love about your writing to our new Facebook Page! We’ll be thankful that you did!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Jake
9 Comments
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I am thankful for my characters and can’t wait to see where they end up taking me.
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Jacob Thank you for reminding us to stay positive in this wonderful occasionally painful process.
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Jake,
I am very thankful for God giving me a wonderful mind where I can think so creatively. I was told I have a great imagination. To me, that is why I ventured into screenwriting. I wanted to use my abilities to write screenplays. In fact, this has become my passion in life. I will never forsake the wonderful gifts God gave me and will use them to entertain others.
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Great post!! Thank you!
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I am thankful for the opportunity to learn how to better make my dreams come alive for others – for the opportunity to learn how to better create the worlds I hold inside so that people can visit there – and how to better find my heart and share it. I am also thankful for the rich continuity writing is adding to my daily life and to the belief and hope that it gives to my future. And, yes, I am deeply grateful for Jake and his generosity, talent, energy and skills AND for my fellow writers – most especially Linda, Mike, Paul, Rebecca, Sean, Steph, and Xan (my fellow master adventurers) – who have so many worlds we all should visit. xo Happy Thanksgiving!
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Absolute freedom…
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I am thankful for the opportunity to tell stories from my heart and soul– being in a world where you can taste the wines of nappa valley but make the audience feel compassion for a character struggling with an ailing disease.
Writing made me direct films, and directing I’m able to tell the story from the words on the paper which is the passage way to the writer’s most inner thoughts and feelings. This our work meaning!
Most importantly, I’m thankful that I strive to make a living from this…how cool is that?
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Writing helps me discover what I am thinking…but also, I’m pretty sure, writing confuses me, I think. That’s what I love about writing!
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Ever since you talked about this idea in class about orienting ourselves towards “what works,” I have created a new folder called the “what works” file. Building a new draft on what I love has, not only helped clean up all the wordy files that were starting to bog down and confuse me, but also connected me more deeply to the story I’m trying to tell.