After church services today, I ran into one of my fellow writing friends. Almost as soon as she saw me and gave me a hug, she exclaimed, “I HAVEN’T DONE ANY WRITING THIS SUMMER!” *face palm*. I then replied with, “ME TOO. THE STRUGGLE IS REAL.” We then spent the next 15 minutes talking sporadically and very rapidly about how we had set so many goals for ourselves as far as our writing went this summer and were able to commiserate with each other about our “failures” together. 😛 It was great catching up with her, but talking with her made me realize something: not writing anything isn’t failing per say. Sure, it’s the beginning of July and I had originally planned to finish my CCR novel by the end of August and haven’t written anything beyond a paragraph since NaNoWriMo last fall…but hey, I’ve been doing a lot of other things! I always feel like a writer never stops writing, because it’s true. Throughout the camps, volleyball games, shopping, and various other summer activities that have kept me from writing, I’ve actually come up with a lot of new excerpt ideas, both for completely new stories and current ones. What’s more: if you are like me and feeling as though you aren’t getting time to write, maybe that’s God’s way of saying, “Hey, focus on Me and serving My people right now.” At least, that’s usually the case for me. Whenever I listen to Him, I find that I’m blessed with a new sense of creativity and a wonderful feeling of satisfaction, because I’m succeeding in serving Him, even though I’m failing to write. 😉