I want to talk about two things that may or may not be long enough for a full length article on the website, maybe—

It’s the importance of showing up and the fact that I (and likely many others) say, you can’t edit nothing.

I started my Author Client Community at the beginning of the year. It’s a small dedicated group of only my author clients and one invited author friend. But this is a group of dedicated authors and writers who are serious about their writing and author careers regardless of whether they do it full time or not.

We sprint twice a week. The midweek writing sprint is optional-ish, but really for anyone who can make it. It’s shorter, usually only three 10-minute sprints and the Saturday one if our main writing sprint session. Most everyone would try to make it. This Saturday past, we had a full house and it always makes me happy. This is a longer sprint session. Two 10-minute sprints and two 15-minute sprints.

Since we’ve started, most everyone has shown up fairly consistently. Life happens and sometimes we/they might skip a session, or when Hubby had surgery and life was lifing at everyone, we took a week off. Here’s the thing—showing up is half the battle, and I’m so proud of everyone who shows up. Once or twice a week, every week. And the more we show up, the more motivated we become to show up, because showing up is its own motivation and momentum. This week one author had a family sitch, but she showed up for three of the four sprints on Saturday. Another was away for the weekend but she put on her headphones and sprinted while at her thing—we had to ask her to mute her mic because the ambient noise from her event space was bonkers, but I couldn’t be prouder. Of everyone. For showing up. Because words are being written, stories, novellas, books are getting finished.

So my next point. You can’t edit nothing. I’ve started editing a novella that was written entirely during sprints. It needs work, but you know what? There would be nothing to edit if it weren’t for sprints since this author has a full time corporate job during the week. And here he is, with a finished novella. Another author has also completed and submitted a novella. A short story got finished, I’ve written countless articles, two novels are at about the midway point and one is about a third of the way in. I think I might have left out a short story or two in there. All this since the beginning of the year. And some authors only have time to write during sprints, so showing up and writing has become their writing “me” time. Did I mention I couldn’t be prouder?

So if you have a community around you, join it. If not, start one. Mine is virtual. We are located in different parts of Australia, plus in the US and Canada. We use Google meetings, but really any virtual meeting app will work. The point is to show up and write. That’s what’s important. You get to grow as a community, as writers, as authors, and at the end of it, you get to see the fruits of your labour.

One final note. This is a long game. None of this happened overnight. We’ve been at it for five months. Showing up week after week, and writing.