05 March 2010

Friday Day 64 2010 (make time to write)

How did it get to be Friday? The week has rushed past in a blur which given how much I have enjoyed the week, isn't such a bad thing at all.

I wonder how many people are going to get up this morning and go off to work wondering what they would really like to be doing for a living. I have always envied those folks that seemed to know from 5th grade what direction they wanted to go with their lives. I remember being asked that question in 5th grade and being completely unable to choose, there were things about all the classic professions, policemen, fireman, astronaut, doctors, lawyers, writers, and teachers that I thought was pretty cool.

The only occupation that I ever really felt drawn to was that of writer, but I have never had much luck trying my hand at fiction and I don't know how much of that desire was a fantasy of the lifestyle of a writer and how much is actually a love of writing, since as I say, I don't sit down and actually write fiction very often. There is something however that I dearly love about sitting at a keyboard and writing. I love it when my fingers dance across the keyboard and words come out, it feels like magic. If I think back about the things in my life that I am proud of a funny thing comes up. That 25 page term paper I wrote on the use of trains in early 19th century novels. That was a bear of a paper and I hit a home run on that one. So if I had a dream job, I think it would involve writing.

I think part of my problem with trying to write fiction has always been this awful self-criticism that I have always felt when I have tried to write. Everything comes out sounding horrible to me and I frequently stop before I get very far. It's only been relatively recently that I have realized that some of that, perhaps even a lot of that, might not be real or fair criticism. Since coming to that realization and starting to build a little basic self-confidence, I have not really had the opportunity to go back and apply that to writing. It seems like life has been moving a thousand miles an hour for awhile now.

It's only been lately that I have started to realize that waiting for life to smooth out or for there to be more time is a fool's game. Life is an endless banquet which presents an endless number of choices most of which are coming at us simultaneously. Life's choices are not this nice series of linear decisions my brain would prefer. It's more like making a bunch of decisions rapidly and at the same time. It's setting priorities, trying to live by some basic principles, and hoping for the best.

So what do I need to take from all this early morning rumination which probably does not make the least bit of sense to anyone? Probably that I need to set aside some time to write. It' doesn't have to be much, but if there is even a small piece of the dream that I had as a little kid of being a writer then just maybe I should honor that by finding a couple of hours to see if there is anything there. What's the worst than can happen? That I'll end up with a terrible unfinished novel in the back of the file cabinet? That's not such a  bad thing.

1 comment:

Fireflyoftheearth said...

In no way am I a professional writer, but I've done my fair share of research on the subject of being published. Some of the most common suggestions from famous writers is to do just that. Write. Write everything, all the time. Also, try looking at nanowrimo.org. Not because it'll mean you write the next great novel, but because it forces you to push the inner critic aside for a deadline. I've participated and written 3 (or 4) novels. Hack novels, of course. They're not very good, but there's always editing later.

You can do this... and y'now what... It's something I need to do as well. *hugs*