Being thankful

God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today.  Have you used one to say “thank you?”  ~William A. Ward

I will admit that I am sometimes bad at gratitude; such as I am bad at being optimistic. These are things that I have to work hard to remind myself and my brain about. I am prone to anxiety and catastrophizing if I don’t work hard to remember the good things in life. And if I don’t remind myself that everything is going to be ok.

But I am thankful because I am lucky to have many wonderful people in my life. So in the spirit of Thanksgiving (despite some of the horrible history behind it) here are some things I am thankful for in no particular order:

• My family
• My brother
• My significant other (boyfriend, whatever word you wanna use).
• My friends
• Books
• Learning
• Words & writing

What are you thankful for today? How do you show your gratitude? Happy Thanksgiving.

©K. Klein 2012

Inspiration & criticism

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.

~Henry David Thoreau

I am in the process of sharing my rewrite with close friends who volunteered to be beta readers. The thought of it makes me squirm because criticism is so gosh darn hard for me to take. I’ve improved as the years have gone by. I can actually hear the constructive criticism now instead of freaking out inside and out. But it is never going to be easy or anything.

Luckily, thus far, I’ve gotten positive feedback from most of my readers. I find it funny that my brother is my harshest critic and biggest supporter. He always tells me what he wants. That chapter needs more description. (My stories are visual to me, so I often gloss over description in the first and sometimes second drafts). Or he’ll say that he wants to know what X character is thinking or feeling.

He asks me the best questions. Because if he has these questions then I know someone else will have them too. So I am able to work on it because he gets me thinking about my writing from the readers’ perspective. Actually, I don’t consider a chapter in my current WIP/ re-write finished until I’ve read it aloud to him.

This does two things for me. One, I hear my words as I read them. I can hear any awkwardness. Secondly, it gets him asking me questions that need to be answered. I am so lucky. He is spot on; I don’t think I’ve disagreed with him yet. And even if I did, I would seriously consider his critiques before deciding not to change it.

In any case, he inspires me to be a better writer. I love it when he thinks my chapters are awesome and he has no questions. I love it when he does have questions too because it is fun to look at the chapter and make it deeper or more than it was originally.

©K. Klein 2012