My Brain Uncensored

Yeah I don't really know what to call this blog post except maybe ...oh hell truth be told, I'm just letting my brain go uncensored for a bit. I figure it has to happen ever now and then otherwise I'm going to pop!

So here's the thing ...writing, blogging, and the other stuff on my "I have a Dream" list - sometimes I really wonder if I have any chance at all. I look at some blogs in the online writing community and they have hundreds of blog post and I'll be lucky to have a quarter of that before the year is thru. Or more importantly - they're working on their third WIP of the year and I've still got 25,000 words on the same damn WIP I've been working on since last fall. I feel like such a slacker some days. Because I really, really and truly want to be an honest to God published author before I die (not that I'm planning on that happening anytime soon) but the motivation is dying. I can feel it and it sucks.

I started writing with that "I'm going to be the next J.K. Rowling or Stephenie Meyer" passion driving me. And I wrote like crazy! 9 months and I had a 170,000 page novel done (yeah I know I revise the sucker to death believe me). Another 2 months and it was edited. Done and Done. I sent it out and waited on baited breath for the "Please send me more of this amazing manuscript!!!" requests to come rolling in. But they didn't. Instead the real world came knocking.

Dissallusionment is one of the hardest things that a writer has to deal with, I think. I've heard it a thousand times before I sent out my manuscripts - "Every writer has to deal with rejection. Its just part of the harsh reality." But my friends, nothing truly can make you ready for it. You just have to sit there and feel it hit you like a baseball bat to the gut. The first time you say "Okay I knew this was going to happen." The second - more of the same. The third, fourth, etc. Yeah you get the drift.

The hard part is picking yourself up off the proverbial ground, dusting yourself off and sitting back down to the keyboard. Do you revise? Do you shelf it? Do you start over or take on something new?

I think I was literally shell shocked. I didn't want to give up my baby - I had poured my blood sweat and tears into it for over a year!! But on the other had, it failed... I failed. How do you have passion in something you no longer have faith in. I tell you one thing - writing certainly isn't the same after the firey Newbie passion is gone.

I think failure is what kills most writers - those who are weak of heart. I failed but is that it for me? Is that all I'm willing to subject myself to? Hells no. I still want to be a writer. I still have stories banging around inside my skull, screaming at me to let them out. I love that part of being a writer. That creation that is purly mine. There isn't another person on this planet that can write my story.

It might have similar themes or familiar characterizations but it won't be mine.

So I guess I'll keep plugging away purly for the satisfaction of giving life to my creation, my story. And maybe some day I will be published. Maybe someday I will succeed.