KEEP CALM AND WRITE ON

Delving  into the second half of the 40 Days of Writing challenge.

Exhausted. But not giving up.

I am a bit behind as I spent tonight, after getting off work from my second job, helping my husband write a letter of recommendation for a mutual young friend of ours about to embark upon the next chapter of what she hopes will become a full-fledged teaching career.

I've also been busy the last few weeks writing other letters of recommendations, editing scholarship applications, and polishing family and business sagas for a commemorative community history book.

It is as if, since committing to writing every day for 40 days, a dozen other writing/editing opportunities have come my way out of the blue. And it feels great rising to each occasion.

So awesome finding my writing mojo again...and it apparently takes a village to keep that magic energy flowing...

My blog posts automatically appear on my Facebook page, via Networked Blogs, where I get lots of wonderful and much-appreciated feedback and encouragement. I also post my writing on the 40 Days of Writing Facebook page, where I have met and read the works of so many talented, interesting, fun writers from across the country. It's been awesome exchanging comments and encouragement with them, too.

Of course, we are all squeezing in our writing between jobs, families and other daily obligations and responsibilities. So many nights, so tired and knowing I have to get up at the crack of dawn to get ready for my requisite day job, I have come so close to just saying, in an exhausted panic, "The hell with it!  I must skip a day!  I can't do this! I have nothing to say!"

But somehow, in the 11th -- or 12th or 13th --  hour, I dig deep, my muse reappears, and though I may be a little late posting each day, I post SOMETHING. Better late than never, as they say.

The real secret to overcoming writer's angst and preventing 40 Days of Writer's Block? Why, my new mantra, of course.

Just five simple words adorning a necklace I recently received from Amy, my longtime friend and former newspaper cohort from back in the day:

SO BRING IT, DAY 22!