1. You woke up this morning and started your day, and regardless of how you started it, you’re here now. I’m happy you’re here to read this.

2. You have a wonderful laugh.

3. Somewhere, somebody is thinking about you. Even if it’s just that one person you held the door open for, you made a difference in somebody’s life enough to be remembered.

4. You tell wonderful stories, no matter written, spoken, or even daydreamed.

5. I like your smile, unique solely to you.

6. Regardless of your singing talent or training, you make music only the way you can.

Writers write with a whole string of “don’t knows” ahead of them.

Don’t know how the plot’s going.

Don’t know how the story’s going to end.

Don’t know if anyone will like it.

Don’t know if anyone will read it.

Don’t know if it’s worth the effort.

Don’t know what will happen because life is also its own series of “don’t knows”.

We don’t have a formula for success. Sometimes it happens, and I applaud every person who struggled to get there. I am inspired by you. I am motivated by those stories. Your stories.

Writing when you’re struggling is HARD.

Screw that idea that Van Gogh cutting off his ear and suffering with mental health somehow makes an artist “a genius” or better. No, it just means he felt a whole lot of pain while attempting to still, as the struggle went on, make some form of art.

Art isn’t made better or more ingenious because the creator suffers. It just makes it that much harder to write in the first place.

Writing can serve as an outlet, but that’s usually in the form of journaling. Trying to keep up with your OCs or your WIPs and your personal deadlines? That’s damned hard.

To all the wonderful writers, readers, artists, and overall, the dreamers I’ve met across all my social media platforms.

I just wanted to say thank you.

Thank you for sharing your humor. Your love. Your well wishes, interests, passions, hopes, aspirations, art, and creativity with me.

I don’t get to say thanks enough for social media. I guess it’s easy to see if as some omnipotent, all-knowing void where information goes to get likes or disappear. But it’s easy to forget that it’s more than that.

Write the characters you want to read in the world.

In my case, I wrote of a punk warrior with an undercut and serpent tattoos. Okay, so maybe they turn out just the teeniest bit evil as the novel progresses.

I have a TYPE, okay?

I’m not sure if other writers deal with this, but I find myself hitting this strange point where I reread my own writing, get to the final sentence, and go “wait, where’s the rest of it?”

Then you have the realization that, oh right, I haven’t written it yet.

I had a setback recently where I believed that nothing I did was good enough. I’d even started despising the thing I most enjoyed, my writing. Creating stories out of nothing. Creating art? Forget about it. There’s schools for people who are naturally gifted, and you? You’re not naturally gifted, so why bother?

I started believing my imagination was worthless because I’d never be the greatest at what I did. What’s the point if you want to reach the moon, but you find yourself in a gutter just gasping for air?

Fictional characters are my role models.

Alright, before you grab your popcorn and settle in, hear me out.

I’m really just a big dork, and when I want to channel some killer confidence or attitude throughout my day, I turn towards my favorite fictional characters.

Do I want to walk into a meeting and own the room? Easy, Wonder Woman crossing the battlefield with a shield. Do I want to sip my drink and throw a comeback at my rival’s face? Cersei from Game of Thrones, where you at? Heck, do I have a goal I need to strive for? Ash Ketchum from Pokemon. That dude’s been trying to catch em all for multiple decades now. You can’t beat that kind of consistency.

You know the cliche. The one that says that the suffering artist creates their greatest work.

I’ve found that the claim is BS.

Writing when it hurts isn’t easier. It’s hard. When you can hardly find the strength to roll out of bed, that doesn’t make it any easier to open up your laptop or journal and write. When you can hardly put one foot in front of the other, how can you put one word after the other, as well?

The way for me to get out of that, the rut of just, well, nothing, to describe it best to someone who understands what that nothing is…

Morality is a gray area. But, especially when first writing characters, people tend to forget that evil characters weren’t just steeped in evil since the start of their chaotic cruel existence.

And I can’t judge. Hell, I wrote my first novel where the character was just cackling, surrounded eternally by shadows type of evil. They just wanted to take the throne to all power because they felt wronged. They were Darth Vader, I am your father, psyche, Luke! level of evil.

Nobody’s either good or evil. Fairytales might enjoy their cackling witches and mustache-twirling warlocks, but reality isn’t anywhere close to black and white. Like life, it’s just a gray area.

Sometimes, I forget that all my characters don’t have to have perfectly witty comebacks for every line. Or a show-stopping quote.

Sometimes, I forget that not all people are super extroverts who suddenly form fast friendships to go on magical quests or save the world or something like that.

Sometimes, I forget that I, though a self-identifying introverted extrovert, also have my quiet moments. Sometimes, in some situations, I just don’t feel comfortable enough to speak.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking.