I love to write and have a million stories I want to tell, but the minute my butt hits the chair that has been set up with table, computer and reference things, well, that’s when the spider web in the corner of the room that has been there for months suddenly requires my attention, and NOW! I don’t think I am alone in this situation. It happens to the most earnest writers.
If I say I am a poet but have not sat down for a year to write even a single verse, I would still consider myself a poet. I say I am a writer and I do write every single day but I still feel like I have a long way to go to let go of the imposter syndrome that haunts me. I have close to 1,000 followers in my 5 blogs. Those are not overwhelming numbers but considering I have not applied any SEO techniques or paid for a fearless marketing webinar, I would say I am doing very well.
Sometimes I wish I could be in the mail room of a major publishing house. I would love to be privy to exactly what kind of material is being submitted by hopefuls like me who actually finish a manuscript they feel is worth publication. They have a story to tell and tell it. 40 years ago, I wrote a humorous story (in my P.G.Wodehouse phase) that I thought had potential. I was so sure of it, I mailed it out to an “agent”, paid money to have it edited, then paid more money to have them market it, to be disappointed months later when they wrote to tell me that they shopped it around but there was no interest. I don’t even know where the story ended up. I think I expected to somehow become an instant best-selling author and when rejection came, I gave up. I was around 24 at the time, married to an older, grumpy guy who gave me no support in that project so I just went about my life, working, going to night school for secretarial science so that I could, what?, type someone else’s manuscript?
All my life, I have put obstacles in front of me to keep my writing schedule very limited, in the best of times. I am no longer married to an ogre. He is my partner and is very much an enthusiastic cheerleader of my efforts but I have yet to really finish a single one of my “novels” to share with him. I belong to a small writers group and I have shared with them to much encouragement. I don’t know how it happens but the minute I share and get positive feedback, I can’t complete my work and in true scattered manner, I immediately begin a new story that will have exactly the same fate. Woe is me, I hope I get better. Perhaps expressing myself in this way will allow me to open my mind and let the story flow out of me. Not a new one but at least conclude one of 3 current ones that all have potential, I am told. Nothing worse than something that had potential but never got anywhere. Like a lover who thought he confessed his love when in fact, he kept it all in his head! Hmmm, now there’s a story!
Exploring writing by writing 