“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It’s that easy, and that hard.” –Neil Gaiman
Writing for me at times comes easy, but mostly it comes hard. Which is why for the past several months, until this 31 Day challenge, I had only written about once a month. And most of that was not even my best writing. On a day when the writing flowed it was easy to dash off some words and post. Other days, words were lurking, but they were harder to corral and the motivation was low, so they hid beneath the surface begging to be brought to life in ordered chaos. They would have been hard, but they would have been good. And probably worth it.
The good writing is harder to let go of because it is the writing that tears your soul apart. The writing you’re not sure you want to share with the world. So, if you write it at all, you tuck it away in crates and journals to read again in two or ten years and you go on living on the surface writing the easy stuff when it breezes by and hoping that you have enough “fans” (I use this term loosely) to keep up the facade that you actually are a writer.
When you are willing to face the hard stuff and put your good writing out there it won’t matter to you if it’s read by one or one million all that will matter is that you wrote the good.
writing in grace,
Sadie
Teresa L Hardymon 
On my desktop I keep a quote from Virginia Woolf to help me think through just this problem – the writing that tears your soul apart and the wondering whether anyone else wants or needs it: “Do not dream of influencing other people… Think of things in themselves.”
I started a blog because I hoped it would help me practice writing. But the intimacy of writing and the publicity of blogging are confusing me. Still trying to work that out.
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I like the Virginia Wolfe quote. It does seem that “intimacy vs publicity” are two different sides of the same coin. Figuring out how to make them work together is key, but how do we do that. For me, figuring out the purpose for my blog is part of that journey. I feel like I’m still looking for exactly where I fit in with the blog world, or even if? and, do I keep the same blog name… oh and do I use my real name. When I started the blog I decided to use a pen name, which gives some anonymity…..so guess I’m still trying to work it all out too. I enjoy our conversations!
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So do I. The conversations are a clear benefit of blogging.
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