Do-Over

The original point of this blog was to chronicle my transition from amateur to professional author, and maybe explore what being a professional author means, aside from someone actually paying me to write.

Only I am not nearly as close to that goal as I thought I might be in March, when I started all this. It's kind of hard to chronicle what isn't really happening in the first place!

I took on the task of writing what I assumed would be a small story, a piece that is essentially an extrapolation from an existing story. I though I would just use that as practice to work over a few situations and transitions I don't have a lot of practice writing, as well as get myself used to the anxiety of actually allowing others to read my work. And for those purposes it's working out splendidly. I'm gaining confidence and working at my highest level of competency since...well, ever, I think. And the story has become huge. Seven months later and I am only halfway through it. I'm enjoying myself, which I think is really the whole point in the end. If I didn't enjoy writing, and just wanted a J.O.B., I would be standing in a McDonald's right now.

But I'm not getting paid for this thing, and since it's an unauthorized practice piece shown only to a few trusted friends, it's not going to be publishable. So I started to lose my confidence in this part of things, that I am showing myself and anyone who cares to stop by my progress on the road to so-called legitimacy. Because my original work has been mothballed for the moment while I finish this enormous story that seems to eat whatever comes near it. It's huge, it's not half-bad if I do say so myself, and sometimes...it scares me a little. I had no idea a story I personally wrote could have this power over me and my life.

And that's the hardest part of doing any writing, including this blog. Writing this story, and any story, now threatens to subsume the rest of my life. I could easily write all day and all night, but that's not fair to my family and not fair to me. Whether I like it or not I have to be a whole person before I can be a writer. I think that's just one of those distasteful lessons I have to learn.

A while ago I wrote that right around my college graduation, real life subsumed my writing and I had to stop -- then, I needed a job, any decent paying job that would keep me sheltered, fed and clothed. I stopped writing, finally altogether, for about ten years. And by doing so I found out the hard way that the less I wrote, the less I could write, and I spent a lot of time trying to forestall the misery of that by lying to myself: I didn't really want to write. I didn't really care if I had any talent. It didn't really matter that I told myself stories in my head all day long, or that even the slightest aroma (much less a big event) triggers full-scale stories in me, or that this happens to me all day long, every day, no matter what. It meant nothing that I can only relate to anything through story -- so what anyway?

So what anyway.

The writing came back, full-force, about 18 months ago now. I was shocked at how grateful, truly, plaintively grateful I was, to know that I could still do this thing. Even more so to know that, in fact, words are the only things I can do well. I merely manage everything else, and a lot of that I manage badly (ask me about my leaking roof on today, this fine stormy morning!).

But words are the only things I can actually do.

So I thought I better just shut up and do them. I've decided to change the focus of this blog just slightly, to make it a chronicle not of my transition from amateur to professional, but to detail my thoughts on writing in general, in an atmosphere that really demands I be a stay-at-home dynamo, which anyone who deals with me knows I'm just not cut out to be. My goal here is to be as honest about all this as possible -- to wear my verbal heart on my sleeve. I'm a lousy essayist when you come down to it: too many words, not enough time taken. But I will try to be, if not entertaining, at least informative. Maybe I'll be nothing more than a train wreck. But I plan to use this space to say what's on my mind and what I need to get off my chest about allowing myself to write, to tell the stories my brain simply will not stop producing, and to see what happens to them and me as I try to form them into something entertaining and eventually marketable. I'll do the best I can, because really, that's all I can do.

Thanks for listening. :)