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Before i studied story, i was trying to write a novel, and it was terrible. it wasn't going anywhere, and i couldn't figure out what i was trying to do. it was really hard; much harder than i thought it was going to be. now that i've studied story, i think i'd have a different approach and maybe i could actually get it done.
-Donald Miller
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Before I Studied Story, I Was Trying

Donald Miller
Before i studied story, i was trying to write a novel, and it was terrible. it wasn't going anywhere, and i couldn't figure out what i was trying to do. it was really hard; much harder than i thought it was going to be. now that i've studied story, i think i'd have a different approach and maybe i could actually get it done.
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Writing Thinking Trying

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Maybe it’s my own fault. maybe i led you to believe it was easy when it wasn’t. maybe i made you think my highlights started at the free throw line, and not in the gym. maybe i made you think that every shot i took was a game winner. that my game was built on flash, and not fire. maybe it’s my fault that you didn’t see that failure gave me strength; that my pain was my motivation. maybe i led you to believe that basketball was a god given gift, and not something i worked for every single day of my life. maybe i destroyed the game. or maybe you’re just making excuses.
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It's very bad to write a novel by act of will. i can do a book of nonfiction work that way - just sign the contract and do the book because, provided the topic has some meaning for me, i know i can do it. but a novel is different. a novel is more like falling in love. you don't say, 'i'm going to fall in love next tuesday, i'm going to begin my novel.' the novel has to come to you. it has to feel just like love.
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Trying every day to tell the truth is hard. there are harder things, of course - arguably, living with lies and meaninglessness, living in despair is harder, but it's hardship disguised as luxury and easier perhaps to grow accustomed to, since truth is usually the enemy of custom. there are harder things than writing, being president obama, for instance, and having to deal with house republicans, or trying to fix the leak at the fukushima reactor, these are harder, but writing is hard.
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If i had been a different sort of person, maybe less impressionable, less intense, less fearful, less utterly dependent upon the perceptions of others - maybe then i would not have bought the cultural party line that thinness is the be-all and end-all of goals. maybe if my family had not been in utter chaos most of the time, maybe if my parents were a little better at dealing with their own lives maybe if i'd gotten help sooner, or if i'd gotten different help, maybe if i didn't so fiercely cherish my secret, or if i were not such a good liar, or were not quite so empty inside... maybe.
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Now we cannot...discover our failure to keep god's law except by trying our very hardest (and then failing). unless we really try, whatever we say there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that if we try harder next time we shall succeed in being completely good. thus, in one sense, the road back to god is a road of moral effort, of trying harder and harder. but in another sense it is not trying that is ever going tobring us home. all this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to god and say, "you must do this. i can't.
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