All through school middle school, high school and college, I was told: you should write.
I liked writing, but I was undisciplined, and a little lazy (I’m qualifying, but we know that already, right? ok.)
Over the years, efforts were sporadic, uneven, and I didn’t have a routine. I relied on ‘inspiration’ which was the equivalent of saying ‘whenever I felt like I had inspiration,’ which may or may not have been the case.
I recently found some of that writing; some of it stands up, but most of it is cringe-worthy. It had no substance, and it looked like what it was, rushed and off-the-cuff. Oddly enough, I was better at short things than long.
I did the ‘workshop’ thing, and the ‘writer’s group’ thing, and got even more bogged down and made less progress.
Then LIFE happened: Marriage, kids, moving, work, routine, trips, the whole suburban thing, and then it changed, and then it was gone.
On my own now, the excuses I had were over. There were no more obligations: The kids were grown and independent, the ex was now independent, and I was…alone.
Alone with no more excuses, alone with more time than I knew how to fill. There was music, but that was mostly on Sundays only, outside of an occasional rehearsal or mid-week thing.
The words of my teachers came back: You should write.
So much time lost….’You should write’
So much life passed by…’You should write’
I’m not where I want to be: I’ve suffered loss…’You should write’
And so, with those words in my ears, I sit down at my laptop, fondly remembering the dreck I put out on my typewriter, and my ‘electric’ typewriter, and I write my first fantasy novel (as yet unpublished) and the dam broke, and now I can’t stop.
At this time of my life, with all of that experience behind me, I feel I now have something to say that will be good, if not valuable; funny, even if true, or maybe especially because it’s true. Something to offer people that will allow them to feel, to think, to experience.
Something to enjoy, if only for a little while, until I write again.
Not everyone will like it, and that’s okay. I can say that now, and mean it.
But I always hope for the best.
Beyond Panic 