From as early as I can remember I wanted to be a writer. Specifically, a reporter for the Washington Post. When I "grew up" after realizing that the guv'ment would give me this thing called a Pell Grant to go to college, I took my first couple a years at a Community College.
I chose Journalism as my major. (natch) Fueled by the vision of field assignments in exotic locations, I pursued my courses with a vengeance. I was a late-starter (at 25) -- I had to make up for lost time. No assignment was too small -- if it happened on campus, I could find an angle and fill a spot in the student paper with a story. My ability to write catchy headlines became a minor (very minor) legend in the news room. I won second place in a national collegiate contest for one of my features the head of the journalism department submitted on my behalf. Not too shabby for a first year. I was on my way...I could feel it.
Until I hit the mid-point of the first semester of my second year (technically my last year, as it was Junior college) approaching grade time and I had... about 13 "inches" and needed about 32. Staring down the deadline with a keen sense of impending failure, and against all my advisers advice...
I punked out and switched my major at the last possible moment, dropped the offending class and became the newest guppy in the casting pool of the Department of Speech and Theatre. I had taken just enough theatre hours to make the switch possible and began a 10-year odyssey as a second-rate actress.
Heartbreaking, I know. Gag; don't break out the violins, yet.
I can't regret the chequered theatre past -- however indirectly, it led me to my husband... And he ain't too shabby, either.
Those dreams of being a reporter for the Washington Post were shelved, a long time ago. The 'writer's block' that seized my lapels back in my second year of Journalism shook me to my core, and I never gave a passing thought to writing again. It wasn't until I got involved in the online world of 'ER' fandom and encountered this strange thing called fan fiction that I began to wonder if I could put pen to paper and crank out something interesting to read again.
Let me 'splain... No, too long; let me sum up: I started writing again. Fan fiction mostly, but some poems again, too... A few headlines, short stories... Readers seemed...kind of pleasantly entertained...a little. I started to think...hey, maybe. Maybe I can...oh, I dunno, write again. Like, maybe even ...try...to, uh, be published. The hope that I could was like a tight knot in my gut -- I couldn't really distinguish the features of the feeling enough to even describe it as hope -- but it was there. A little glimmer, anyway.
And then this really neat thing happened, like most neat things -- I wasn't looking for it, didn't even know I needed it, until it was there and then, of course, it was indispensable; my husband (the one I met -- indirectly -- through acting) said, "I think this is the next phase for you; I think this is what you're supposed to do." That hope that was a tight knot burst in my gut... and I wasn't sure if it was a completely pleasurable sensation because I cried and it sort of hurt, too... maybe like the first stages of appendicitis.
It was profound, because I couldn't remember my mother, my father -- anyone other than my fifth grade social studies teacher Stephen P. Liles -- telling me: Hey, you have the right stuff, girl! Go get your dream!
And it would be all good, except for the crippling realization that I've written NOTHING for months...and every time I've attempted it, I walk away. I'm scared, scared, scared to really go for it. To go balls out and be consistent. I'm like PeeWee and the snakes; every time I pass my laptop I think for a moment and then shudder and slink away. Writing -- or rather, FAILING at being an accomplished professional writer SCARES HELL out of me and ironically...makes me NOT write. Tell me to speak in front of a room full of people about a topic you just handed me, shove me out onto the stage with little to no prep and I will do some fancy verbal footwork and -- at least -- bullsh-- my way through it, oh yeah. But ask me to simply sit down and write -- something, ANYthing -- once every day?
Well... see the title of this post.
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