Be honest with yourself about your inspirations.

A few weeks ago, I was in a bookstore during a trip. I saw the most beautiful book ever written, a tome filled with gorgeous illustrations and even more gorgeous prose. It was a retelling of some of the most beloved “folk” stories in North America. <br><br>I was entranced, and as I flipped through the pages, I felt this deep sense of longing, the painful, yearning sense I’d had for so long, about my own work. <br><br>I wished I’d done that. I wished I’d been the one to create it. I wished I’d written that story, and these are the strange and vague feelings that make us take up a project in the first place, is it not? <br><br>For me, it’s always been writing. I just wanted to write. I wanted to craft worlds, characters, adventures, like the ones I’d grown up with and loved, but my own. The ones that were inside me, waiting to come out. I could see them in my mind, but somehow, I couldn’t put them down on paper. <br><br>The book in the store was “The Night Gardener” by Jonathan Auxier. It’s a retelling of the legend of the Tooth Fairy. I thought, wow, this is beautiful, and then I thought, I really want to do something like this. <br><br>This is a powerful thing. If you want to write these stories with the same level of detail, the same level of technique, the same level of care and attention, put in the time. On Auxier’s website, it said his debut novel had been in the running for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize. He writes very well, very much in the style of someone who has spent decades honing their skills. <br><br>I sometimes struggle with ideas and putting them down, and I wondered, when I saw his work, about whether I could write that well, myself. Why couldn’t I write that way? Why wasn’t my work as good? This is also a natural part of our journey, to compare ourselves to others. <br><br>The reason it isn’t as good, is that I haven’t put in the years it takes to reach that level. Auxier’s work is very well done, and you can tell that by reading it. For myself, if I want to reach a similar place, I need to put myself to the task. I have to write. I have to practice, to hone my skills, to learn. <br><br>If you want to write these stories, like I do, put in the time. Learn to do what you want to do. Read, learn, practice. Look at the craft involved. How are they using these things to tell the story? If you want to write, you can. <br><br>But that does involve work. <br><br><br>Edit: I did not write this to disparage Auxier’s work, but to reflect on my own experience, and make this point for a wide audience of readers.