By Guild Member C. N. Jeffrey (Follow her on Instagram and at her website!)

I think of the summer garden as a yearly project, not unlike writing a novel. A considerable amount of planning in the beginning, a mad dash to get it all in, and then months of weeding out the bits that don’t fit, watching, waiting for the first tiny, beautiful vegetable that sustains you through the hardest parts. It’s easy to focus on the end result, the vegetables to eat, and the flowers that grace the table. But it took hundreds of small tasks and individual moments to get here.

I’ll let go of the gardening metaphor here, but what has been on my mind amid this harvest season are all those individual moments and the rewards along the way that encourage us to continue even when it is tough.

Choosing to write instead of doing something else can have a significant opportunity cost. Writing means less time spent with friends and family, less time spent, cave diving, cosplaying, or cooking. Most of these things (except cave diving, ya’ll are a different breed) are guaranteed to be more enjoyable than searching for typos. So what makes us stick with it?

I am currently working on what I’ll call the second draft of a novel and I’m struggling through the muddy middle. Near the halfway point, I realized the story needed to be told in the third person instead of the first. Which meant starting at the beginning and revising each page, before I made it to the final part of the draft. If I had figured that out earlier, it would have saved me time, but revisiting the first chapters while I was still deep in the conflict allowed me to discover the perfect spot to add a foreshadowing detail. I doubt I would have realized if I had started over after reaching the end. As soon as I added that detail, I could feel things click into place. I solved a problem I didn’t know I had. That is my small win. Chasing the feel I get when I weave all the threads together in just the right way, the way my heart races when it comes together. That is why I keep going when it gets difficult.

I asked my writing group what kept them motivated to keep going and, for some, the win is the act of writing itself; being able to disconnect from the realities of every day or achieve a flow state. Others said their win comes in connecting to others in the writing community, getting positive feedback from readers, or finding the right words to express themselves.

I would like to encourage you to take a few minutes, grab a journal, type it in the notes on your phone, write it with your toes in the sand if you need to, but think critically about your writing. Not why you write, but the bits that motivate you to continue writing. Then, when you are going through a tough time, you can remember the tiny, beautiful things you gain along the way by persisting.

C. N. Jeffrey writes upmarket fiction with mystery/thriller elements. Her characters are suspicious of all the wrong people, a problem she shares. She lives in the woods of Massachusetts with her husband, who does not mind the dark, two kids, who do, and a dog, who always wants to be let outside.