Whether You’re Writing or Running – Go For It

I’ve loved writing since I was young: letting my creativity out as a funny story, mysterious foggy night short piece, or later on as poetry. I never wrote consistently, but have always enjoyed reading, and sometimes “wrote” stories in my head without getting the words down on paper.

It wasn’t until almost two years ago that I thought seriously of writing and getting published. I wish I could say it was because of a great insight or that I thought I had the potential. But honestly, someone came to me asking to publish one of my blog posts. It wasn’t until that point that I thought it might be something I could do.

I know getting published isn’t easy, many great writers get rejections. I recently read a short piece “it’s ok to suck” by Mur Lafferty. He compared writing to running a marathon. Well, I could sure relate to that! And I thought that advice applied to so much in life, not just writing.

We know that in sports, we need to practice to become better and get faster. In Lafferty’s example, he talked about gradually building up the miles and running consistently in order to be able to finish a marathon. And that’s true for everything we do. It’s easy to get frustrated, but we can’t expect to be at the top of our field or the fastest athlete without practice and without sucking.

I’ll admit, I’m a perfectionist. So I know how hard it can be to let yourself make mistakes. But without those mistakes, how would we get better at what we do? How would we learn?
It’s easy to put things on the back burner when were not motivated, but it takes discipline to keep going and to get better.

I like using quotes for motivation. And in this case, a great one is
“Don’t be afraid of failure, instead be afraid of not trying”

So whatever it is you’re doing, whether attempting to qualify for Kona, training for your first 5k, or dreaming of being at the top of your field, never give up, don’t be afraid of making mistakes, and go for it.