Someone said to me today “Good luck with your writing!” Which, I have to say, was lovely of them, but it leads me to question, why do we tell writers “good luck”?
As far as I’m aware, writing is a lot of hard work, sleepless nights, wandering thoughts and cups of tea. Since when does luck come into it?
In essence, you are saying that you hope they get lucky and some fabulous, fully formed idea falls into their head. If that’s happened to anyone, please can they let me know? I’d like that to happen too. I took a break from writing because I had no ideas for ages, and I hated it. That was until I realised that writing anything should lead to something, after developing every aspect possible of a piece of work.
My current idea started with a word, some personal experience, and a lot of “just write the blasted thing!” I’ve only written six chapters and I’m already contemplating changing a major character from a rich male to a poor female…
So, maybe we should say something like “keep working with your writing” instead of “good luck with your writing”. It seems more realistic after all. But maybe not, as “good luck” does sound more friendly. I don’t know… Maybe it’s just me.