Once upon a time, I decided I wanted to be a writer.
It started when I was ten years old. I begged my mom to take me to Dollar General to get a new notebook to write my stories in. It was a pink and black composition notebook that I plastered stickers all over the front of. I guarded that notebook with my life. No one could touch it except for me. I wrote fanfiction in that notebook about a radio series nobody else my age listened to. That's how lame I was in elementary school.
The years progressed with me writing more and more. I looked for any excuse to write and to create. It didn't even have to be an original story. If there was an extra credit writing assignment and my grades didn't warrant the need for extra credit, I still did the writing assignment. The older I got, the longer the writing assignments got. The longer the writing assignments got, the happier I was.
I started writing my first book my freshman year of high school. Looking back on it, it was not a New York Times Bestseller idea. My mom insisted that it was wonderful writing. However, it was my mom. What fourteen-year-old wannabe author actually listens when their mom tells them that their writing is good?
I started making storyboards. I started looking for inspiration on Pinterest. I wrote until three in the morning and then woke up at noon and started writing again. This went through every school break I had. Thanksgiving. Christmas. Spring. Memorial Day. Labor Day. If there was a chance for me to not be doing school work then I was writing.
I could never figure out the beginning. I could never figure out the middle. I could never figure out the end. All I had was a vague plot idea that no matter how long I worked on it I could never get it to go anywhere. So I quit. I scrapped that idea and threw it away. Occasionally I look back at it and think, "Oh. That. That was an absolutely terrible idea."
Then I moved on to another idea my junior year of high school. This idea was a little bit better. It didn't involve much world building. But it was still terrible. No matter how much I wrote, my writing had no dimension. It had no flavor. It was flatter than a bottle of pop that had been left open for a few hours. It had no quirk. It had no charm. My jokes? Let's not even talk about those.
I spend my days looking at a blank document page with a blipping little line that screams, "YOU NEED TO START WRITING." But then the internal dialogue of crippling self-doubt settles in.
SELF-DOUBT: This story's been done before.
ME: But not from this angle.
SELF-DOUBT: Yeah it has. By the way your characters taste like bland toast.
ME: They're not that bad.
SELF-DOUBT: Your dialogue is boring and you really don't get that whole show don't tell thing, do you?
This continues on and on and on until I'm finally ready to through the computer at the wall and never write again.
But just as I'm about to delete Microsoft Word off of my computer, I sit down and start again. I write and I write and I write until my word well has run dry. At the end of the day my writing is still terrible, but when I have my avid reader friend read it she says that it's wonderful and that I need to keep writing.
Self-doubt still tells me that maybe it's just because she loves to read and wants more reading material. But then there's part of me that wonders what if I keep going and finish this project and it's actually good?
I may never have a bestseller. I may one day have a bestseller. Heck if I know. What I do know is that on my days when I hate writing the most is also when I love writing the most. Something about it pulls me back every single time.
