Maybe..Maybe….

I have heard those voices lately and I’ve just barely begun. My life is a shambles and I feel lost. I keep coming back though and I didn’t know why until last night. At first I thought it was because I was hiding in my own imagination that it was my version of sticking my head in the sand. Then I thought.. and thought.

What am I? Not what species or what race..but what am I? I finally came to that answer. I am a creator of stories, be it drawing a picture of a thing or person I see in my head or writing or just thinking of worlds and the characters that entrance me. …..I will become what I strive to be..because if I don’t then I will always be asking the question.. What am I?

It’s totally on point with this thread. Hope it helps.

Title: Find Something to Die For. And Then Live For It.

Had a killer post planned for today. All outlined in my head. Woke up early to get ‘er done. And then I went out to fetch the paper and everything changed.

Life is like that sometimes.

It wasn’t a headline that rocked me this morning. It was a quote inserted above the headline that read, “I feel it draws on everything I’ve ever been or done or learned. In this role, I get to draw on everything that I am.” Below the headline, which isn’t relevant here, was a picture of man speaking into a microphone, with a solemn look on his face, as if he was telling his children about life.

And I thought, what a lucky man indeed.

Maybe it’s because I’m old, but this hit me like a ton of rejection slips. Because that’s how I feel about writing. Some days I hate it, but most days it makes me feel alive in a way that nothing else — avocation-wise… my wife and son always remind me that I’m very much alive — can. It makes me remember the dark days of the past few years during which I felt I had nothing to write for. A feeling that is a close second to nothing to live for in terms of weight on the soul.

And so I’m back at it. Writing two books about writing. Writing another novel. And writing this blog, which if you’ve been here a while — with the exception of this morning’s post — is really about much more than me. As a blog should be. I tell people this is an instructional writing resource, because — again, with the exception of this morning’s post — I don’t really want to write about me. I want to write about you.

That’s a lesson the years have taught. It’s not about me. Never has been. Wish I’d have figured that out earlier.

But I digress, back to that newspaper quote. Writing doesn’t become that significant a part in your life until you begin to take it seriously, to submit yourself to it and be vulnerable to the reality that it’s always bigger than you are. It demands that you draw on everything you’ve ever been or done or learned. Everything that you are.

And becomes, in doing so, everything you’ve ever dreamed of being.

Which makes us, as writers, very lucky folks indeed.

The trick is to find what sparks your passion back up and gets that fire roaring. Like I said in the other post, I’m glad to see you around.

But if you’re a real writer, and the dream begins to slip away, then you begin to die with it. No matter how south your road is heading, there is always an alternative strategy that can inspire you. Change genres, change categories, try poetry, write erotica, write for your church, write love letters, just WRITE SOMETHING. If the dream was real, then it was always about the love of executing the craft — or it should have been; a dream about fame and fortune is a fool’s dream if it doesn’t spring from a love of writing itself — and the so-called dream gets warped into fantasies of where the craft could lead you.

We only have control over one thing in this arena, and that’s our work. We can’t control editors and agents, we can’t control what readers think, we can only control what they read. And that’s the real avocation of writing — connecting with readers, no matter what field or genre or delivery-mechanism you’re writing in. And readers are never guaranteed. Which means, at the end of the day, you have to write for yourself first.

As for me, I’m suddenly alive again because I’ve discovered blogging. Not just to make myself feel better — though it does — but to help other writers. As a writing instructor as well as a practicing hack, I’ve turned my focus outward instead of to the mirror (the one with a reflection of that pity pot in the background), and suddenly the dream has a whole new dimension. I’ve started a site for writers to come for hard-core information, instruction and hope, with no writing seminar B.S. and puffery. Just the truth.

That’s the dichotomy of the dream. Write to please yourself. And then, write to serve others, even if it’s just entertainment on the plate.

It feels good to be a writer again, here among writers, living the dream.