Hey, Thinkers! Is that what we call our blog readers? Thinkers Through Their Fingers? How ’bout I just call you Writers?

I mean, that’s what we are, right? What we do.

Tangent: Do you ever feel like everything is falling apart? As though you can’t do anything right? I had one of those weeks this week. It just felt as though I was forgetting everything left and right, and I had no one who really understood what I was going through. Between writing, family, kids, church, and hormones, I was a walking mess.

I’m not writing this to complain, but to be honest. Because I know–I know— that every single one of you has felt this. A bad day, week, month, year, (decade?) whatever. It happens to all of us. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the course of my short life, it’s that we are far stronger than we think we are.

It’s not over until you say it is. And as long as you keep going, your luck will keep changing. For better or for worse. We have to accept that. Things will not stay the way they are forever. They will not always be frustrating, or happy, or insane, or blissful. The state in which you find yourself is temporary. Do you hear me?

TEMPORARY.

Cherish the good times, and wade through the bad. They won’t last forever, I promise.

We write because we love it, don’t we? Because it fills a need. All of us feel that itch, that urge, to sit down with music, or silence, and the clicking of keyboards or the scratching of pens, to write. To outline, to edit, to go through three emails of CP notes and figure out which ones you agree with.

It’s hard to make time to write. It’s hard to get our family/spouse/children/siblings to understand how much of a need this is. It’s not just a hobby, though we sometimes have to treat it that way. Sometimes, we have to set it aside for other, usually more important, priorities. And that’s okay, we can do that. But we will always come back. Because that blank page is always calling.

I think Jo Rowling said it best. When her youngest child asked, ‘Mummy, if you had to choose between us and writing, what would you choose?’

Her response? ‘Well I would choose you but I would be very, very grumpy.’

We know how you feel, Jo. *fist bump*

Writing is more to us than just putting words on a page. It’s a sort of therapy for many writers. A release, a break from the trials of our everyday lives. After a hard day, when my children have been driving me crazy and I feel like I haven’t done anything right, I know I can return to that blank page. Because there, I am in control. My words might be beautiful, they might be terrible, but they are mine.

And I love them.

_____________________________

A Gryffindor, Mormon, and Wandmaker, Darci Cole is an author of YA and MG scifi/fantasy, the YA usually with a romantic twist. She’s edited a number of manuscripts for clients and also served as an editorial intern for Entangled Publishing during the summer of 2013.