Project to Published: "You are a Mustang"

Project to Published

advice for other authors, writers and lit lovers

"You are a Mustang"

You are a human, not a machine. I keep hearing about writers who are quitting or thinking of quitting because they can’t force themselves to sit down and write when they want to. Here is the thing, you are not a horse that is meant to be broken and saddled. You are a mustang.

While my fiancé and I may not own horses or be avid horse riders there is something so beautiful about a horse that neither of us can help but admire. Something so free about their spirit but the most beautiful sight he or I have seen when it came to horses was when they were wild. When their spirits drove them where they wanted to go and they danced in dust storms and ran as fast as their hooves could take them simply because they wanted to.

You shouldn’t be trying to force words from your mind with such monotony that the words stop flowing completely. I know I say to keep a schedule and to keep working at it because writing is a muscle that has to be exercised but you also need to remember that you are not a horse that needs to be broken and saddled. I don’t really think that a broken horse is what most leading publishers are after. They don’t want a horse where they have to find a worn road and send them trotting along with people always riding their backs, they want a mustang that will follow the paths they find and when they run out of path, they make one.

Your writing shouldn’t be like running in circles in a training ring, it should be dancing in dust storms and running as fast as your legs can take you because believe it or not, that is what your writing is, it is freedom. You have a blank page you can do anything with. That person you imagine being, the person you want to be, that blank page can make you that person if you let it and before you know it, you aren’t in a ring riding in circles, you are dancing in the wind and the words are flowing just as fast. That feeling you feel when you let yourself go and your hands fly across the keys faster than you even realize until that moment when you look down and suddenly, you have pages written. Never forget that feeling.

Hold that feeling in your heart as your own little secret with yourself because that feeling is a writers true freedom. In that moment you aren’t just a writer, you are a mustang.