For those of you faithful enough to stop by and see what’s happening here (even when it doesn’t seem much is happening here), you know that one half of my identity is that of “scribbler”.  In addition to capturing stories visually with my camera, I have talked here and there about doing the same with words.  I’ve started a time or two (or three) and then set Kate and Sam’s story aside because I was “too busy,” “not feeling the muse,” and any of a number of lame excuses for not pressing through on a story that really needs to be written.

I read a blog post yesterday that hit me square between the eyes.  The Uncomfortable Silence appeared over at SkipJack Publishing, and boy, did it make me uncomfortable.  But in a good way.  Pamela and Eric are passionate about the writing craft.  Passionate about not only seeing Pamela succeed in her writing endeavors, but seeing other writers enjoy the same success.

The thing about Pamela and Eric — it’s not enough that you are published, if your definition of “published” means you wrote a slapdash piece of crap printed on 5 x 8 paper glued between some poorly illustrated pieces of shiny card stock.   It’s not enough that you “feel” like you used your life’s blood rather than printer ink to write your book.  Being able to say you wrote a book should not only mean you put a lot of words on paper, but that people want to read those words.

And for people to want to read those words, you have to do the work.  You have to put in the time required to produce a quality story that is worthy of the time required for others to read it.  The Uncomfortable Silence is basically a “come to Jesus” piece for those of us who’ve been lazy in our writing craft.  Whether that means getting the darned thing down on paper to begin with (guiltily raising my hand here), to doing the hard work of making the darned thing worth the paper it’s printed on and more — you owe it to yourself and your readers to do the work.

Skip on over there and give the blog post a read.  Odds are you’ll feel a little uncomfortable, but odds are you’ll also learn something and be motivated to take your work to the next level.  I know I am.