Don’t forget to go check in at Sven’s to post your progress – that’s where I’ll pick the winner from for this week’s prize, which will include backlist copies of my books as well as Alison Kent and others. I just have to pull them off the shelves.

We officially end on Wednesday, and all the sponsors will be around to share their final thoughts with you and cheer you on at the finish line. Well, we’re all so close to the ending of the very first Sweating With Sven’athon, and I hope you’re all at the point of reaching your own personal goals you’ve set for yourself at the start of this journey.

Yes, I know – we’re all supposed to end up with 70k. Those are the Sven rules. But you all know how much I detest rules, so for everyone who doesn’t think they’re going to make the goal, just ask yourself if you gotten more done over these days than you had before? Were you writing more often – did you make your writing a priority? If the answer is yes, then you’ve succeeded, no matter the word count. Remember, it might never get easier, but you get better every day.

So I’d like to get back to the business at hand, which is the writing. Sometimes, between the blogs and the check-ins, it’s easy to lose the magic, to forget why we put ourselves through things like this – why we want to do this much writing during this time period or any time period. Why we want this as our career. Why we put aside other things in order to make room in our lives for putting words down on paper as though our very lives depended on it.

Sometimes, it’s simply about the way you feel when you’re writing.

Sometimes, most times, as I’ve said before – the hardest part is opening the document and actually starting. I don’t know if we procrastinate sometimes because we know how all encompassing the actual writing can get, how hard it can pull you in and not let go until it’s drained everything from you in a wonderful way, most of the times. Because even when it’s hard, it’s good.

So, I want you to finish the sentence, When I write (or some variation thereof) – I’ve given you two of my favorites for inspiration and then I’ve made up my own. So put it in quote form with your name at the end, so when you’re a famous author (or more famous than you are now) someone can just google you and be inspired by your words.

“Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.”
-Gloria Steinem

“When I write, I feel like an armless legless man with a crayon in his mouth.”
~Kurt Vonnegut

“When I’m writing I’m someplace else – I’m in that wonderful, magical place where I’m not aware of anything around me outside of what’s going on the page and sometimes, I come out of that zone and I find that I’ve been smiling to myself for quite a while – and that’s how I know I’ve been doing some real writing – because when I’m writing, really in the thick of it, I can’t hide my happiness.”
-Stephanie Tyler

Steph T.