love the work

My Love Letter To Writing

My Dearest Love (the Greatest Love I Have Known),

I thank you for this gift. For this ever, daily mastery of these 170,000+ words in the English language. I love the fact that my imagination meets timing and we come together again. Pushing this passion through my fingers in a fury that is unmatched.

I love the fact we keep coming together, in the early hours, late nights, in the car, secret messages on my phone–our relationship? Ooh, our relationship?! It has been hotter these past few years since I have decided to nurture this relationship. I thank you for your grace with this, dearest. I thank you for steadfastness. For reminding me that I have more in me than I ever thought! Thank you for your caresses, your calls, and your presence in my life.

You make me strong.

You make me fearless.

You keep me humble.

I think that is essential to any loving relationship: we can neither get complacent, nor take each other for granted!

The time when we weren’t in harmony, when we were juxtaposed adversaries, when your love was taken from me, and my attention was divided–we were enemies! But I cried for you, I missed you! I needed you back, and I had to push past all doubt that people through upon me to stop seeking you. To doubt our relationship, that our love was–not true.

But you always can back to me, and I always returned to you, and I vowed to never leave you again. And this, in this, with this, in front of the entire world, I rededicate my love to you. I rededicate my affection and attention to you. I will not leave you again, my love. My greatest love…

The love that allows me to show how deep love can be.

I thank you, and I look forward to forever together–our forever together.

I am grateful for you. I always have been.

Love,

JBHarris

Encouragement Pages-04/10/2020

Today, I want you to embrace the process which has taken you to the world of your current work in progress.

Embrace the research that will come.

Embrace the stretching of your talent–which will make it a skill.

Embrace where the story is taking you…and enjoy where you end up. You can always go back and change it later. But you have to get to the end first–and something that is the hardest thing.

With Love & Ink,

JBHarris

Encouragement Pages-04/08/2020

As a writer, you are going to become familiar with what I call ‘The Exchange.’ This is how you pay for the talent, the gift, and your humility to the pursuit of this craft.

The Exchange is this:

Life happens in three ways: to you, through you, and around you. It your job as the writer to record, decode and make sense of what seems to not make sense. As a writer, you constantly exchange time for talent, work for experience, heartbreak for word count.

The Exchange is constant…and worth it.

With Love & Ink,

JBHarris

Love Will Always Take Work

Drafts do not just fall out of the sky–they are the product of love, talent and time. The fuel to this process, will always take work. There is no shortcuts to the development of a draft, but the sustaining energy of any work of any draft is the love you have for it!

Let me explain a little more.

There is a fire that should be created in you when you begin a Work in Progress. You should want to see the end of the work as you create it. Bear in mind the words of Toni Morrison, “If there is a book you want you read, you must write it.”

You must write it!

From brainstorming, to freewriting, to the completion of a draft, you must be willing to follow the process of the completing of a draft must be powered by passion and work! There is a part of you which must love what you are creating in order to complete it. Love is the source by which powers the work.

Find the source.

Finish what you have started.

Encouragement Pages-02/14/2020

On this day which celebrates love, passion, and all things related to romance or its enkindling, I want to remind you of one more thing.

Writing will always be a love, most demanding. Especially if you do it right–or often.

Today, embrace that. Allow all those feelings which course through you when you begin a work to be your incessant motivation to what you desire to create.

Love the work. Embrace the affair. There is no high like it.

With Love & Ink,

JBHarris

Encouragement Pages-02/05/2020

There has to be a reason why you do what you do, dear one. There has to be a reason that draws you back to the work, to brainstorm, to collaborate. There must be a reason why you write.

Pain.

Love.

Mourning.

Joy.

To make sense of things, or to hide other things.

But there must be a reason, and you might have to write to find it.

With Love & Ink,

JBHarris