Fear Itself
It's funny how the pursuit of one's dreams can be such an exchange that you forget the destination. Which direction am I even going?
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer. I knew that I loved to read, and to write stories or papers or whatever was required of me. I like writing for myself, and enjoyed the chance to write for others. It seemed like such a simple dream, and despite the encouragement of others with regard to my skill -I was still given the impression that it's more difficult to make a living writing than just about anything else.
Maybe it's that image of the starving artist, or the writer who's struggline to make ends meet, that has been written into our culture as a romantic supporting character perpetuating the belief. I don't really believe it's true anymore, but at some point in my youth I bought into that and I have to say it has screwed me more times than I'd like to admit.
Why someone couldn't push me towards writing, complement my ability, and leave it at that I will never know. It always had to be accompanied by the hints and the smirks and the broadcasted idea that writing can't be your MAIN job -it has to be done on the side.
Maybe if you're Stephen King.
The problem here, for me anyway, isn't that I was misled (although I was). It's that I fell for it so hard that I gave up my dreams of becoming a writer because I didn't think I'd be able to support myself or my children that way. My academic career started off with a bang; the nearly perfect GPA I had as an English major at Rockford College (3.87 -Dean's list and scholarship awards) wasn't enough to convince me that this was my calling. It didn't dissuade me from the fear that I'd be on welfare trying to raise Sebastian alone waiting tables with a BA in English Literature. It forced me to back down from my dreams, and to transfer to a state school with more "professionally viable" majors I could apply my skills to.
Journalism isn't the farthest thing from my dream -in fact I'm fairly certain that it's going to allow me to transition back into it fairly well. Writing spans across so many more platforms and mediums these days -you don't have to write for a newspaper when you can write articles and be published online (or self-publish if you REALLY don't care about making a living, but just want to be seen). I can do this, and my skills are in demand even now.
Unfortunately, the problems have changed. I still have the financial obstacles -ever present and consistently moving farther away from me, so I can't hurdle them until I get to where they are. But now that I have embedded myself in the University and in my classes, I sit in these public computer labs for several hours both studying for classes and finding myself unable to produce what I want to in the limited timeframe I have to actually write.
I need to set aside a specific period of time every day for writing. It can't be lab time or school time, or even "me" time. It needs to be WRITING time.
I just need to figure out when.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer. I knew that I loved to read, and to write stories or papers or whatever was required of me. I like writing for myself, and enjoyed the chance to write for others. It seemed like such a simple dream, and despite the encouragement of others with regard to my skill -I was still given the impression that it's more difficult to make a living writing than just about anything else.
Maybe it's that image of the starving artist, or the writer who's struggline to make ends meet, that has been written into our culture as a romantic supporting character perpetuating the belief. I don't really believe it's true anymore, but at some point in my youth I bought into that and I have to say it has screwed me more times than I'd like to admit.
Why someone couldn't push me towards writing, complement my ability, and leave it at that I will never know. It always had to be accompanied by the hints and the smirks and the broadcasted idea that writing can't be your MAIN job -it has to be done on the side.
Maybe if you're Stephen King.
The problem here, for me anyway, isn't that I was misled (although I was). It's that I fell for it so hard that I gave up my dreams of becoming a writer because I didn't think I'd be able to support myself or my children that way. My academic career started off with a bang; the nearly perfect GPA I had as an English major at Rockford College (3.87 -Dean's list and scholarship awards) wasn't enough to convince me that this was my calling. It didn't dissuade me from the fear that I'd be on welfare trying to raise Sebastian alone waiting tables with a BA in English Literature. It forced me to back down from my dreams, and to transfer to a state school with more "professionally viable" majors I could apply my skills to.
Journalism isn't the farthest thing from my dream -in fact I'm fairly certain that it's going to allow me to transition back into it fairly well. Writing spans across so many more platforms and mediums these days -you don't have to write for a newspaper when you can write articles and be published online (or self-publish if you REALLY don't care about making a living, but just want to be seen). I can do this, and my skills are in demand even now.
Unfortunately, the problems have changed. I still have the financial obstacles -ever present and consistently moving farther away from me, so I can't hurdle them until I get to where they are. But now that I have embedded myself in the University and in my classes, I sit in these public computer labs for several hours both studying for classes and finding myself unable to produce what I want to in the limited timeframe I have to actually write.
I need to set aside a specific period of time every day for writing. It can't be lab time or school time, or even "me" time. It needs to be WRITING time.
I just need to figure out when.