I’m Not Writing

I’m not writing.

It’s been like 5 months since I last since I last tried to write my collection of short stories.

I’ve tried to write… ok, not really.

I’ve wanted to write. That’s true, but the desire never really overcame whatever was stopping me. I’m still not sure what it was, other than the fear of actually being good at it.

You see I wrote a story in July for the 24-hour short story writing contest and I thought it was pretty good and so I waited to see what others thought.

And so I stopped writing. I wanted to write more but I couldn’t. I thought the story I had written for the contest was so awesome that  I was afraid I didn’t know if I had actually written something good. I needed someone else’s opinion.

The answer came in September, two months after the last time I wrote something. I came in second.

VINDICATION!

I entered the next 24-hour contest.

Nothing. I couldn’t write. What if I couldn’t replicate what I had done? What if coming in second was as good as I could ever get? What if I wrote something that sucked?

And so I wrote nothing. The rest of 2017, I wrote nothing. Ok, I tweeted. I wrote facebook posts. But nothing long.

I did have ideas. I have lots of ideas. But I couldn’t decide which idea to start. So many ideas. So little time. So many excuses to not start.

And then December happened. I did not write anything. I was still paralyzed by my inability to start. But I sold books. I sold 33 books.

Huh? No marketing, no tweets, nothing. And I sold 33 books. I’m not quitting my day job anytime soon, but still. Thirty-three books… How the hell did that happen?

And now it is 2018. A new year. A new chance to start. I walked three and a half miles today but while I was walking I was telling myself, today is the easy day to do this. First day of the year. First day for the motivation to be there. First day for me not to develop my excuses. Today was easy.

What of tomorrow? Or a Tuesday in March? Will I be walking then? Will I be writing?

I dunno. But today I walked. And today I wrote.

What’s next? Let’s find out? See you tomorrow. Hopefully…

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