what writer?
friday, july 26, 2002


sometimes i think this writing thing for me is just a hobby. i mean, it's not like i can not do it, it seems i have always had to write. when i was a kid i started with silly poetry, i mean really silly poetry. it was probably appropriate for my age, but definitely not something i'm particularly proud of now. then i began writing stories, all of which are gone except one. it was around high school i decided i wanted to write a novel, but someone told me that everyone in the world was trying to write the "great american novel" and i would never get published. now, the person never said my writing was awful (and i really don't remember who the person was), but i took it that way (must have been that teenager thing). i stopped taking my writing seriously. poetry became an emotional outlet. i stopped writing stories altogether. i was introduced to gaming and my stories became gaming scenarios.

and that's how it stayed for years while i got married, had kids, got divorced, went to school, and got remarried. i tried interior design, art, and web design. when i went back to school, i was going to try something called family life education, but the state had other plans and i ended up in english. back in writing. only now i had no confidence in my writing. fortunately other people have had and still have the confidence in me that i lack. because of them, my own confidence is building.

but i still wonder if i am truly a writer.

i can't seem to focus the way most writers i know do. i'm slower to get things done. i do a lot of other things, have a lot of other interests, and they all seem to interfere with the writing process for me. i plan to start and there are a dozen other things grabbing for my attention and time. so, i end up trying to get other "little things" out of the way and the next thing i know i haven't written much of anything. i have all these plans, all these stories i want to tell, a world to explore and write about, and i just can't seem to get focused enough to do it. i know some of this is the adhd and the anemia. the anemia makes me slower, so i don't get as much done as i used to (yet i seem to have the same expectations for myself), and it makes the adhd worse (we didn't even know i was adhd until i became severely anemic) so i am more easily distracted. i tell myself i need to get rid of some of the excess, but i enjoy all my hobbies. so i see all this stuff going on and think that i can't do this. yes, i love writing, i want to write, i want to be published, but i just don't seem to have the single-minded determination that's necessary.

some writer i've turned out to be.