Editor’s Note: This post is part of a 28 day blogging challenge from Imperfectblogging.com. The goal is to develop your blogging voice. To learn more, click here. 

Sometimes life gets in the way of life. It’s just one of those things, I guess.

Here I am in a program to write a blog post everyday for the next 28 days and I am so behind it’s almost like starting over. Life has kept me from becoming more consistent with this challenge. Add to that that I’m so ridiculously behind on my Jennie Manning story, I just want to crawl into a hole and sleep until it’s over.

But here’s a little thing that I’ve learned about writing and life: sometimes it’s just a series of starts and stops. Starting over is the new starting over and the only way to fail is by stopping.

That’s why I love this quote from Clarice Lispector. Frankly, I love everything that woman has ever written. Another one of her quotes is engraved on my laptop.

“I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort.”

Clarice Lispector

Both of these quotes give me hope and warm fuzzes but the first one, about questions and answers and writing, that one keeps me going when the copy isn’t flowing as it should.

See, writing whether it’s fiction, nonfiction, journalism, poetry, or some other combination, is about truth — finding it, exploring it, denying it, accepting it. Truth is in the center of all forms of art and that is what makes it beautiful. (Click to tweet this.)

I have so many questions about life, all aspects of it. Why do people do the things they do? What is love? What is the meaning of humanity? How does it all work?

So many questions but not that many answers. As a writer I need to explore, to make it understandable or at least to come to a sort of peace with the answers to the questions. Writing allows me that freedom. That reminds me of another quote.

“The great luxury of my life is the freedom to sit at this desk.”

Richard Rodriguez, Hunger of Memory

Luxury? Necessity. My pen will never stop moving. As long as I have curiosity and wonder in my heart for things I know nothing about, I will write to learn more about them.

Why do I have this drive? I guess every artist is looking for something…