As most of you know, I am participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I am 10 days into it. I am following several Twitter accounts that offer encouragement to authors participating. They all have been extremely helpful in this process.

The goal: write a 50,000 word story, something that can be turned into a novel.

My project is a futuristic science fiction superhero novel. It is ambitious, I know, but I have actually been working on the outline for years. It is exciting, but sometimes I find myself discouraged, wondering if I am actually taking this story somewhere.

However, on Sunday, I told someone that I am writer. It is my job (okay, not my day job), and that I was participating in NaNoWriMo. I was expecting that look when they say, “Oh, that’s cool/interesting/what?/are you insane/does it have vampires?” (Okay no one has asked me the last two, yet).

However, this person said, “Wow, that is so cool! I know you can do it. I think you can do anything that you put your mind too.” I was grateful because this person was very genuine and I appreciated it very much. It reminded me that those are the people we are writing for. We write for ourselves, it is true, because we are writers. However, we also write for the readers. They encourage us and we enlighten, inspire, and entertain through our work. It meant a lot to have this encouragement, and I hope you, my fellow writers, find it too.