Great Writers Series: I Am A Writer!

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by Carley Cooper

For the next three weeks, I am taking part in a writing challenge.  It's called "15 Habits of Great Writers", hosted by author, Jeff Goins.  He has an awesome blog, by the way!  So, I hope that whatever hoops that I'm required to jump through for the next few weeks will keep you entertained as I learn to be better at my craft. 

To find out more deets about the challenge, and to see who else is participating check out this link on Jeff's blog called "Mastering the Habits of Great Writers".  The challenge begins today.        

I have a few regular devotional blog posts already written and scheduled to be published in the next couple weeks, so those will continue.  

If you'd like to join the challenge, there's always room for one more!  Before starting, though, it would be wise to is to read Jeff's book called "You are a Writer: So Start Acting Like One".  

The truth is, I've been writing for about five or six years now.  Most of it has been in blogs, though Worship Melodies is only one year old.  The story about how that happened is in my recent post called "Happy 1st Birthday"; which was definitely a surprise party for me!  In the past it never occurred to me to write to be a professional writer.  I wrote because I liked sharing my life, and people liked reading about it. 

Even though I've had a dream to write a book for many years, turning my writing into a career, or using it to make money didn't really occur to me until recently.  I just figured 'What the hay?!  If I can potentially make a few bucks with this gig, than why not?  It's not like I'm not doing it anyway."

Anyway, I write because I love it, God is leading me to it, and because people tell me they're blessed by my work.  I've finally found my peace within through this thing we like to refer to as writing.  It's like I've finally figure out who I am.  Better late than never, I suppose.  What greater payment is there than that?  If someone should wanna throw me some cash for this along the way, it's a bonus.

It was only about six or seven months ago that I really started to tell people that I am a writer.  Below is a short video I did a couple weeks ago to enter another one of Jeff's challenges; and it describes how I started telling people that I am a writer.  Truthfully, when I started telling people that I am a writer, I was really nervous about it.  I seriously thought I'd get some kind of feed back; some good, some not so much.  

What really happened though, was that people looked at me with an attitude of "You're only figuring that out now?!  I knew that a long time ago."  

The first hoop in this challenge is to simply declare my truth by telling you this:

Hello, my name is Carley.  I am a writer. 

(And it seems I'm the last one to know!)

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