Enough people have asked me the question: “What are you doing now?” or “What do you want to do with your life?” that the answer just fumbles out of my mouth without any second thoughts.

I want to be a writer.

Other people have the same dream. That’s where the amazing stories we write are born—inside that dream. I have several stories that I want to share with the world, but most of them lack either a substantial middle or a climatic ending that I can be satisfied with.

Sometimes they lack both.

So my computer is full of characters with their stories unfinished, their destinies undecided and it is incredibly frustrating. The simple solution would be to just sit down and write, right?

I wish it were that simple.

After finishing college and especially college athletics, my amount of free time when I’m at home has increased due to the lack of homework and the fact that I'm no longer practicing or competing every day.

I should be working on crafting my novel every day, whether it is the plot or my characters, just something to keep the story moving forward. It could even be just five hours of editing; it would at least be something.

However, I find myself more times than not staring at the blinking cursor on my computer screen and my mind turns into a blank, white wasteland. My fingers won’t type, and my mind won’t churn out even a sentence, much less a paragraph. It’s after an hour I slam my computer shut and in a fluster find something else to do with my free time.

Days will go by and I’ll find myself again with more free time. This time around, however, my fingers can’t keep up with my mind as paragraphs on top of paragraphs fill the pages. It will be the progress I was looking for days ago and without even realizing it, five or six hours will have passed of just straight writing. It’s an incredible rush, but its infrequent occurrence is quite aggravating.

The best writers in the world say that it’s important to write every day even when you don’t feel like it, but I don’t know how they manage to do it. The concept baffles my mind because my creativity ebbs and flows from day to day.

When I’m not in a creative mood, my computer is my worst enemy, and the next day it’s my best friend as I breeze through seven chapters of my book. How these world-renowned writers can force themselves to sit down and write every day is beyond me.

But, then again this is why they are making the big bucks, and I have yet to send out a manuscript.

I sometimes wonder how soon I could send out my first copy to a publisher if I were to take the advice I have read from those who succeeded down the path as a writer.

But then I realized that the sooner I sent out a manuscript, the sooner I was closer to falling flat on my face. It is a reality that almost all first-time writers have to face when trying to get published.

Perhaps my subconscious mind is fearful of the inevitable rejection letter that will come my way once I put my name across the front of my manuscript and sent it out for the world to read and judge.

Perhaps it’s then that my fingers freeze on the keys and my mind returns to that white canvas, but I find myself out of paint.

Regardless, as I read more about what the greats have done to land them where they are today, I realize that even when I want to throw my computer across the room I need to keep writing.

Even if I don’t like what’s appearing on the screen, I need to get keep typing away at the keys. Then, later, when I’m in a more creative mood, I can iron out the wrinkles and sand down the rough edges.

I might not like the process at first, but I’m hoping that in the end I will finally have a completed book saved onto my computer.

I can turn in a completed manuscript that I am proud of.

Then, when someone asks me about what I’m doing with my life, I’ll be able to change my answer: I am a writer.