I Am A Writer

Over the past seventeen years or so I have gone back and forth in my aspiration to become a writer.  I have asserted that carn-flabbit, I AM a writer.  And then I've been all, "Nah, nevermind. I'm not a writer. I'm not willing to put that much effort into being successful at it."

However, I have learned over these seventeen years, one thing I cannot do.  I cannot stop writing. I have literally tried to force myself to stop writing. Stop reading. Stop imagining. Stop dreaming.

I'm not published.  I haven't even tried.  The whole process scares the bejeezus out of me. Spend years trying to get picked up  by an agent while my stories stagnate and die? Self publish and ruin any chance I have as a published author? Put my work out there and hear crickets in response? No thank you!   I find that I get so driven, I work so hard, get hopeful, and read all the downer talk about how *hard* it is to make it big as a writer. How big-name publishers suck. How self-publishing is career suicide.  What the crap do I do, then?  It looks like this world is in a no-win feedback loop.

So then I abandon my product, move forward with my "real" life and never look back except in my head. I get depressed that I will always be unknown as a writer.  That no one will take me seriously until I got published. But to be published, I need to be taken seriously.....Only to revisit all my work 6 months to years later.  This has got to stop.  I have to at least try.

Self publish? Submit to agent? I don't know yet, but I know that at this point I just have to do something.  I just want people to read my stuff...even if I give it away for free....as long as people are reading it, I don't care.

Because I AM a writer (dang-nabbit).