Author Shelly Goodman Wright

Judges of season seven “The Next Food Network Star” said goodbye to Justin D in this week’s fourth of July showdown. The judges perplexed by his drastic change in personality felt he was the one to cut this week. Even Guy, the guest mentor, asked him “which guy are you now?” Although the judges took into account the food served and his overall performance in this completion in their decision to cut him, Justin, in my opinion, was trying to please the judges the best way he knew how instead of just being himself. He lost himself as the stakes got higher.

How many of us writers seek change after query letters go unnoticed? How many of us get frustrated and seek out agent blogs and publisher blogs to find out what we are doing wrong? Not to say that is a bad thing. We should want to learn and fine-tune our skills, as long as we still keep true to why we started writing in the first place. We get so focused on being published; we lose the passion we started with.

I think Justin lost what he loved in the competition.

So how do we lose our love of writing? Blogging, reading others blogs, commenting on other’s blogs, marketing our blogs, facebook, myspace, twitter, and the list goes on. Of course most of this, if not all, is important and helps build our platform—but what is more important?

Did we write today? 1600 words? 1000? 500?

There is also something else to learn from the show in general. Justin knew his stuff, but he lacked personality. He was not a strong character and besides the hairdo, it was hard to relate to him or even remember him.

Back to writing: Are the characters we write strong characters? Do our readers want to cheer our hero’s to accomplish their goals? Are our villains hated and despised by the reader?

What reality do you watch? Which character do you want to win? Which character do you want to fail? How can you apply this to your writing?