100 Day Creative Challenge Day 90: The Three C’s

Number Two: Community:

 At the point where you feel like your craft is never going to be good enough, that’s where community comes in. Community is what helps you not to give up.

There’s nothing like being in a community of like-minded people who understand what you’re going through. It’s also necessary to have people who will challenge you and bring out the best in you.

There’s always going to be someone who is better, more experienced, or more successful than you.

Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given,

and then sink yourself into that.

Don’t be impressed with yourself.

Don’t compare yourself with others.

Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.

The Message

If it wasn’t for people in my creative community I’d have given up on writing a long time ago. You can’t put a price on friendship.

 I belong to various writing groups: Christian Writers Downunder, Writing WA, Australasian Christian Fiction Writers and Omega Writers to name a few.

My creative friends—musicians, singers, writers, visual artists, actors, dancers—all make life as a writer easier by sharing encouragement and practical advice.

My critique partner, Michelle Dennis Evans, author of Spiralling Out of Control and Spiralling Out of the Shadow, and I help keep each other accountable and provide feedback to each other. Sometimes it’s brutal and hard to take and at other times it’s sweet and kind as we pray for, and support, each other.  We write in the same genre and could be competitors, instead we’ve formed a band of sisters who cheerlead each other.

The paradox of writing is that it demands that you glue yourself to a chair to be alone with your thoughts, but the best way to improve your ideas/stories and to share them widely comes through writing in community. Creating in community. We all need help. Writers need community because we’ll fail on our own.

It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed. Napoleon Hill