For anyone who has kids, you know that no matter the age, they don’t always understand why you do things.

This was very apparent the other day with one of my children.

I established a habit in the spring of 2023 to write 200 words a day. You can find where I wrote about this here.

Recently, I was sitting at the kitchen table writing my 200 words. It was during bedtime, and my kids were running around doing their last-minute things before we put them to bed. 

Plopping down in the chair across from me, my teenager asked me why I was working so late.

This seems like a reasonable question. I had lots to do during the day and never got my words written earlier in the day. (It is back to school time.)

I explained the situation, expecting the conversation to be done, when there was this outburst that was something between a laugh and a snort followed by:

“You’re never going to get a book written with only writing 200 words a day.”

Like most authors who really don’t need people telling them they aren’t writing enough in a day, I smiled and explained the truth.

As a good parent, I pulled out the Tortoise and the Hare story to illustrate my point. Slow and steady wins the race.

Constant forward progress will produce results.

For the teenage setting in front of me, I also made him do some math. It went something like this, 

“What is 200 x 30?”

“6000.”

“Now divide that into 60,000. How many months will it take to write a 60,000-word book?”

Instead of giving me a direct answer, I got another rebuttal.

“None of the books I read are that small. They all have more than 60,000 words.”

Rubbing my head, I saw the point in context to what most of my kids read. However, in context to a writer who wants to get their book written or someone who has only fifteen minutes a day to write, 60,000 words in ten months is fabulous.

I won’t bore you with the rest of the points I made to help my young one learn that it is better to keep working, even if it is slow progress than never to work at all or to go in short, unproductive bursts.

Progress is Progress.

It took me too many years to understand that it was better to sit down and knock out 200, 500, or even 50 words in a day instead of not writing because I couldn’t devote hours to my writing.

Every creator has a different schedule and life demands for their time. Encourage each other, no matter the number of words or art you create in one day. Cheer and celebrate the small victories. They add up to mountains of work created and books published.

Whatever the number of words you get on the page today or the art you create, pat yourself on the back and celebrate that you are that much closer to getting your book published and into the hands of raving fans.

I also want you to lift someone up that might be having a bad day. Creating can be lonely, and many creatives don’t have a solid base of other people they can talk to about their struggles.

We love our families and friends, but they won’t get what it is like when the art in our heads must be put on paper, no matter the medium, a drawing, or a story.

Create what you can and keep your head high. You are still making progress.