{"id":1674,"date":"2016-08-24T09:43:13","date_gmt":"2016-08-24T13:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vg-ford.com\/?p=1674"},"modified":"2016-08-24T09:43:13","modified_gmt":"2016-08-24T13:43:13","slug":"guest-post-carrying-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/?p=1674","title":{"rendered":"(guest post) Carrying On"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Please welcome my awesome friend Katie Bryski to the blog! She’s releasing a new podcast that I’m LOVING! The image at the top is how I imagine us together. I’m not saying who the evil one is, though.- Val<\/em><\/p>\n

Carrying On<\/p>\n

Hi everyone! I\u2019m so glad that Val invited me onto her blog today! I\u2019ve just released an audio drama\u2014Six Stories, Told at Night\u2014which is very exciting. But today, I\u2019m here to talk about tenacity in the writing process.<\/p>\n

Sometimes writing is hard. Not just the actual, sitting down and writing part. I mean, sure, that can be hard too, but I\u2019m talking about a different kind of hardness\u2014the hardness that comes when you suddenly look up and think, What on Earth am I doing?<\/p>\n

Who wants to read this?<\/p>\n

Who am I kidding?<\/p>\n

Everything I do is awful and I should just stop right now.<\/p>\n

Such crises happen to all artists, whether they admit it or not. So what can you do, when such doubts strike?<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to share a story.<\/p>\n

Part of my dayjob involves giving brewery tours. Each tour concludes by leading a tasting of three different beers. One night, I was giving a special after-hours tour. The rain was pounding down outside, thunder rumbling on top of us.<\/p>\n

Now, the brewery itself is in a basement, and said basement is prone to flooding. I was handing out Sample No. 2 when I glanced towards the back of the brewery. A trickle of water dribbled between two of the panels in our ventilation system. As I watched, the panels gave way completely, and that trickle became Niagara Falls.<\/p>\n

Everyone spun around. Water gushed onto the floor, but it was mostly staying on the other side of the room. My brain went into overdrive. Due to licensing issues, we couldn\u2019t drink the beer outside the brewery. We only had one more sample to get through. What to do?<\/p>\n

We kept going, gosh darn it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve given this tour so many times that I have literally done it in my sleep (gotta love work dreams). At this point, it\u2019s practically muscle memory\u2014my mouth knew what to say, and half my brain attended to the tour while the other half monitored the advancing flood.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of reasons that I could give for continuing the tour. But what it comes down to is this: it\u2019s what I\u2019ve been trained to do. When that tour begins, we get through it, come hell or high water\u2026literally, in this case. I kept talking because\u2014well, because I couldn\u2019t not. The instinct is too strong.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s an instinct several years in the making. It\u2019s like a muscle: the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. A similar instinct can save us when the vents burst in your writing life, too.<\/p>\n

My theory is this. You build your writing muscle. You reinforce that instinct. You lay down a foundation of discipline until you can\u2019t not write. And then\u2014when the crisis of faith hits, when the rejections come, when someone you respect criticizes you harshly\u2014you can have that moment of thinking, \u201cWhat do I do?\u201d But really, you already know.<\/p>\n

You carry on. You keep writing. You do your thing, despite the rising waters. Why? Because this is what you do. This is what you\u2019ve been trained to do, and what you\u2019ve done every day, and what you know so well that you can hear your own words over the storm.<\/p>\n

-KT<\/p>\n

KT Bryski is a Canadian author and podcaster. She has short fiction in Daily Science Fiction, and stories forthcoming from Strange Horizons and Apex. Her audio dramas \u201cSix Stories, Told at Night\u201d and \u201cCoxwood History Fun Park\u201d are available wherever fine podcasts are found, and she is currently at work on her next novel. KT is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing. As you may have guessed, she also has a mild caffeine addiction. Visit her at www.ktbryski.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Please welcome my awesome friend Katie Bryski to the blog! She’s releasing a new podcast that I’m LOVING! The image at the top is how I imagine us together. I’m not saying who the evil one is, though.- Val Carrying On Hi everyone! I\u2019m so glad that Val invited me onto her blog today! I\u2019ve …<\/p>\n

>>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94,32],"tags":[95,70],"class_list":["post-1674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-tour","category-guest-post","tag-blog-tour","tag-guest-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1675,"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674\/revisions\/1675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}