You know what every good writer needs every once and a while? Another writer to talk to.

–And alcohol. Mostly the alcohol.

The other day I went on a nice excursion to the mall with my fellow writer friend and we enacted that terribly stereotypical and entirely accurate depiction of girls going shopping for fun. We did and we shopped a ton. I really don’t remember the last time I’ve shopped so much (mostly cause of the lack of money [yeah totally becoming that other stereotype of the broke author]). I normally go window shopping and this time I actually bought quite a few bits and pieces and spent most of the day shopping. Of course this was fine since I was supposed to be resting my wrist from typing anyway.

Anyway, so after shopping we decided to get some food to eat and talk about writing. We went to a Japanese restaurant we frequent and ordered a bunch of appetizers and one other we really needed: SAKE. Got ourselves a tiny bottle and started drinking it before our food even came. It’s probably not best to feed into the stereotype of the struggling writer always drinking but in this moment of weakness we definitely did.

Over our drinks and food we had a nice talk about each other’s stories. We had a nice talk about what our favorite part of our books was. The funny thing was, though we could each pinpoint exactly what our favorite part in each other’s books, we honestly couldn’t figure out our favorite parts in our own work. Perhaps because we are too close to our writing to be able to pick anything that particularly stands out…

Still, I thought it odd we couldn’t find the best in our own work so I decided it should be our task (or homework if you wish) to think about our favorite part. I think it’s important that authors are able to distinguish the one moment in their own book that they liked the most–whether for description, dialogue, feeling, or action. It’s nice to be able to think “ah, that was good”. Creators of anything really need to be able to be humble as well as look at their own work and see what is great about it.

So, now you know my homework for the week. I’m going to think hard on what I believe my favorite to be. So for whoever is reading this, I task you with the same homework: What is your favorite part of something you’re working on?

Don’t forget to seek out adventure!

xxx