Go tortoises!

Well, you received three posts in one day yesterday. Hopefully, I figured MailChimp out, and it won’t happen again. Stay tuned next Monday to find out.

Everyone knows the story of the tortoise and the hare. Even though the tortoise wins, everyone makes a big deal out of the hare and how fast he is. No one congratulates the tortoise in any of the cartoons I’ve ever seen. (He does get clapped for in this real-life race, which is nice.)

I’m doing very well in National Novel Writing Month. By day four, I had 25,000 words. A lot of people congratulate me and tell me how impressed they are. The funny thing is, I don’t feel like I deserve congratulations. I’m at a point in life when I can write a lot, so I am. Plus, I’m a really fast writer, so it isn’t hard.

No, I am impressed with the tortoises. The writers who are going to take thirty days to write 50,000 words and have to carve the time out of their busy schedules. The ones who agonize over every word but get it done anyway.

There are tortoises in all walks of life. Those people who finish, not the fastest, but the steadiest. The ones who stick with it day after day, even when it’s hard and even when other people have passed them by. They deserve congratulations.

Perhaps the simple fact is, we all deserve to be noticed sometimes. Whether people write like Isaac Asimov (over 500 books) or Harper Lee (2 books), they should all be congratulated. Look around you and notice the tortoises and the rabbits. Perhaps one of them has already won a race. Give them a cheer.