Most Likely To Be Posthumously Famous

It's not like I just woke up one day and thought, hey I think I'll be a writer of books. No, this has been the life long day dream since my informative years, spinning stories to my barbie dolls. Who were Amazons mind you, they needed to be entertained or they resorted to cannibalism. When I was an extremely naive teenager, I planned to publish a book before I was twenty or bust.

Well, I discovered this was an unfair timeline, so as I grew older the age limit stretched, and stretched. Right now its settled at thirty or bust but with only a few scant years left on that magical number I should have learned by now. 

What I have learned, aside from unrealistic life deadlines, is writing is a hard, vicious, taskmaster. Even in your moments of zen creative flow, thoughts flowing like water on the page, you will most likely wake up the next morning and declare everything you wrote in "zen" to be utter shit. Because the dark side of the writer's lifestyle, the one spoken about in whispers and dark alleys, is Editing, with a big, fat, capital E. (Dun, dun, duuuuuuh!) Editing is often a buzz kill, a story that was pure awesomeness in your head can get slaughtered under the editing knife. It can also be thoroughly discouraging. When you step out of your writer's hippie sandals and slip on your editor's wading boots, you might find your self face to face with your own worst enemy. 

I know I am mine. With those people who have actually seen my work, I have heard I could be a pretty decent writer. Of course, this audience is limited to professors and a smidgen of friends because in reality I'm a fuck-wit perfectionist with a motivation problem. When it comes to motivation, the will and need to write is usually choked out of me by the responsibilities of raising two kids, working full time, maintaining my household, etc. Even after quitting my full time job to stay at home more, I still couldn't find the motivation to whip out the lappy and pound out something, anything. I would sit on ideas for months, maybe scribbling down an plot outline on some scrap paper that would inevitably disappear. You don't become a writer unless you sit down and actually write something. 

The truth of it was I was stuck. I spent the last three years penning a YA novel which sat, quietly moldering away on my desk. I have been trying to edit it for months, and it's a soul crushing process. I avoided working on the edits so much, I pretty much avoided writing all together. 

Realizing I was becoming a WoW addict and playing an unhealthy number of online games, I sensed the need for change. So I started working on other things, forcing myself to sit and write anything for a least a couple hours a day. On the advice of a friend I cut computers out of the equation all together, digging out a hoarders supply of blank notes to drool on after I put the kids to bed at night. 

The results are still mixed. Some days, I managed to pen quite a few pages of new material, other days not so much. My hand is often cramped, but I feel I am making more progress than I have in months. Nothing is guaranteed in this lifestyle. Even after I finally finish editing that novel, it's another long, agonizing process to find a publisher. 

I'll take it one day at a time. I'll take a page out of Dory's outlook on life: Just keep writing, just keep writing, writing, writing...(come on, you know you sang it in her voice too.)