January 5 ISWG Blog Hop: What Do You Regret?

Happy Wednesday! The Insecure Writers’ Group is a group of writers offering motivation and encouragement to all those taking on the challenges of writing. Every month the ISWG sponsors a blog hop where writers can blog about a topic related to overcoming obstacles and exploring various aspects of the writing journey. If you’d like to participate in a future hop you can join here. It’s always a great experience, and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in writing and sharing with other writers.

Every month there is an optional discussion question, and this month the question is the following:

What’s the one thing about your writing career you regret the most? Were you able to overcome it?

I try not to give in to the regrets.

Human beings have a lot of emotions, and it seems to me that regret is one of the most common. Ask anyone, and they’ll give you a laundry list of things they wish they had done differently, all with varying degrees of severity in the consequences. I’m no different. I have regrets too, I think it’s inevitable. But I guess what I’m saying is, I try not to think about them too much, or wish endlessly to change them. This applies to my writing too. There are absolutely things I wish I had done differently, finishing my book faster being on the top of the list. It’s disheartening that after so long I’m still working on it! So yeah, I guess if you ask me “what is your biggest regret about your writing career,” I would have to answer the following: that it hasn’t really started yet because I haven’t finished anything! Frustrating.

But even with this, I try to show myself some mercy. We as humans are a work in progress. We accumulate experiences, and these experiences can change our perspective, make us stronger, wiser, sometimes more humble, sometimes more compassionate. The person you are now is a product of many good decisions, but also many lessons learned and slipups along the way. If I had the power to change and give back the lessons I’ve learned in exchange for not having made the mistakes that taught me those lessons, I wouldn’t change anything. I believe we’re all here for a reason, and we’re who we need to be for the moment. You and me, we are exactly the right person for this place in our lives, and we have everything we need to succeed at our goals. I think that is kind of a liberating thought.

Do you have any regrets regarding your writing? Let me know in the comments! Wishing you a great day of life and writing with many wins and fewer regrets. Thank you for reading!

-Winter 🙂