Scribble Squad ✒️

I don’t have any writer friends at the moment but would love to make some!

Hello Scribblers. How are we all doing?

It's been a tricky week here. I went to a brilliant writing conference last week, where I met some lovely local writers - but I've also been feeling exhausted and ill all week because I pushed myself. Life with a chronic illness can be frustrating.

But, using that as a starting point, I thought I'd ask - how do you motivate yourself to write when you're not feeling your best? Do you write when you aren't feeling your best, or do you wait til you're better?

I'm interested to hear your thoughts. For me, this week at least, writing was really helpful until I felt too ill to do anything - it was a world to escape to when I wasn't feeling good myself.

Excited to hear your thoughts ✒️💜

I love this quote from Ira Glass about starting anything creative.

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through." Ira Glass