Since I can't write...

With the holiday season in full swing, I am finding it impossible to designate any time to the novel which is beyond frustrating for me, especially when there are words in my head scratching to get out. Even if there were more hours in the day, I would still be the same restless insomniac that I always have been. To calm my restless spirit I have been reading a book called "Nature Girl", by Carl Hiaasen. It was an early Yule gift from a friend and since I can't be bothered to read a dust cover, and I am only a few chapters in, I have no clue as to what the book is actually supposed to be about. Right now the story is following three different sets of people in three different parts of the United States. I have found it to be interesting enough to keep my interest and far enough outside my usual genre (and the genre of the novel I am writing) to keep reading. At least it is doing something to relieve some of this tension I have.
 Most of the time when I find myself unable to write, even jotting something down on a napkin, I read. It seems to cool a little of the fire just enough to make life manageable for me.

I don't remember where I ever heard this jewel, and if you pressed me for an answer I would have to say it was on Sister Act 2... If the first thing you think about when you wake up in the morning is singing, and you think about singing all day, you go to sleep singing, you're a singer. (I am paraphrasing. I have no idea what Whoopi actually said to the girl.) When I apply that same edict to writing, I feel as though it is what I was really meant to do with my life. 


Do I have some sort of false sense of hope that I might actually make a career and money off of my dream when there are thousands, even millions of people in the world with the same hope and aspirations that I have? Yes. Yes I do. Because I want it just a little bit more than they do. I am not, however, a fool. Being a full time writer means giving up a lot of free time. It means spiritually bleeding yourself dry once in a while. It means having something worth sending out into the world. I may have to work another job, I may have to stop wasting time in my life watching an episode of whatever distraction is on the television, I may even have to stop taking ten minutes at a time on this blog but I am going to do it. I think you are going to do it too. 


We are writers. We have a gift to give. We may be rejected and we may have to compromise but we are doing what we are meant to do. We may also be mothers, line cooks, factory workers, store clerks... but we are writers. We will keep the faith.


Best of luck to you, out there. Make those dreams come true.