Am I ever going to be an authentic writer?

I have decided I want to write. OK. Good.

Now what?

My blog is going well - this is my second - I like having a place I can write short ditties. I have joined a writing forum online and even posted some work on to it. I guess now it is a matter of sticking to it and seeing what happens. I'm not very good at that. I always wanted to know if we were nearly there yet and how many minutes precisely until we would see the sea. They do say - or so I have heard - that sheer bloody minded determination is the best talent a writer can have, but I worry, what if I haven't got enough of it? I suppose that until tested, one's determination is simply a figment of their imagination. I imagine myself writing every day in one form or another. I imagine myself creating scores of finished pieces, carefully polished and ready to be surveyed by the array of publishers that will, of course, be so mesmerised by my blog (I have one follower, my husband) that they will write to ME to get copies of my work. I am also unfortunately a realist at heart and what I may lack in sustainability I make up for by holding a cruel mirror up to the world. So I end up thinking to myself that, yes, one day I will be a writer, satisfied with my work - acomplished is a perfect word for it - but it's going to be a bloody hard slog to get there and I may want to kill myself a few times along the way.

I am still happy to go on in this frame of mind; I have only just started this oh so appealing journey into self deprecating misery. But where to go from here? Just keep writing? What do you mean? You mean to say that the first thing I write will not be an instant hit, smashing the sales records of Dickens? I know I have found it difficult to finish anything adequately that is longer than a couple of thousand words, surely I don't have to redraft the stuff?!

I make myself sound more disheartened than I actually am. I am riding a wave of enthusiasm at the moment that allows me to make jokes at my hopes and fears; you will surely know when I am really depressed, I will be nothing but smiles and fairy cakes. I will make the most of the drive while I can, I am not the best at sticking to things. For now I am trying to keep my fingers in enough pies to eventually get a taste of the meat. So I begin this diary for myself more than anyone else. (Bit of luck really I guess.) I am giving myself a place where I can think and write about my writing and nothing else. I find that irritating things like life, work and friendships get in the way of any other free thinking time and so I will set aside time, when I need to, in order to think and write just about my writing. You never know, I might one day want to look back on what I have written and chuckling knowingly to myself...those were the days.

I have tried my hand at as many different forms as I can so far and find all of the demanding and fascinating in various different ways. Poetry has an instant satisfaction to it that other forms of fiction fail to raise in me, but the story - short, long or even flash - give the chance to expand and grow in a way that poetry never can. Non-fiction gives me the chance to have a good rant about what has really got my goat or just let my thoughts wander through the nooks and crannies of my mind to see where I end up. (Lost mostly.) I love them all equally, but I am hoping that one day, one will leap out and slap me in the face shouting 'this is what you should have been doing all along!' More likely is the fact that I will always like them all equally and I will find that ideas lend themselves to different mediums. In fact, I have already had an interesting experience of this very thing. Advised by a collegue on my forum, I took a piece I had written and adjusted it into a poem (using many of the same images as the flash fiction) and a short story (another not yet finished), the two stories began at the same point, but drifted apart at a key moment in the narrative. I am enthralled by the experience of using the same ideas and even some of the same words, but manipulating the form in order to have a completely different effect. Duh, you say, well that is pretty obvious. But I had never done this before. To me the wonder of writing is something I always dreamed of, but reverred so greatly that I thought I was far to mortal to ever try such a heavenly task. And heavenly it is!

Look at that, I have talked myself back into loving writing and wanting to do some more! Another wonder of the written word. I am not sure that I should continue to write about my failure to finish anything...would that just make this another thing I haven't finished?

:-)