I've had an Epiphany

I think I have had an epiphany. Yesterday I was having one of those awful writing days where you wonder why you even bother. I ended up at Hastings and I bought this book:










I think I was going through some steps in the Joy Diet without consciously thinking about it, I was working through a few of the steps

Desire - being a writer who writes well enough ot be published
Risk- should I buy this book, it will either be just another book that ends up on my shelf or it will be a book that will really help me.
Creativity-Read through 75 pages yesterday and did the exercises after each chapter. I am really finding the book helpful So I a glad I took the risk.

The second thing happened this morning in doing my morning pages. I was thinking of how I struggle with writing concepts like show not tell and description and then it hit me. I have been a journal writer for years and how do you write in a journal, you tell what happens to you. I apparently have been transferring that way of writing to fiction and that is not they way fiction is written at all. Now of course I already knew that fiction was different I just never realized why I was doing this and that makes all the difference in the world.

I really like this series on Writing Better Fiction so much that I am going to use it like my own writers curriculum. There are other volumes on plot and dialogue and character that I will tackle next. I would always tell writing friends oh I have trouble with characters or description but I would never do anything about it. Never find a way to learn those skills I needed. That is changing now and its exciting. Knowledge is power and I am really glad I had to go through this to find these sources that will only make me better at what I truly desire. Life is Good.