In response to my buddy

After reading Liz’s blog post “Masters in Indecision” (she’s great with headlines), I started thinking about my own growth. Like Liz, I did not like school that much, and was more than happy to be done. I do think I graduated with a useful degree, but the field I thought I loved turned out to be something else entirely.

I just started loving writing again, something that took me more than a year to get back. It’s hard to reinstate a former discipline when you’ve gone without it for so long — much like getting back in shape. The first two weeks are always the hardest.

But it’s like an old friend: very familiar, comforting and always there. Similar to a friendship, it takes a lot of work and effort to remain intact. And I need to put more effort in so that it doesn’t slip away and become a memory of something I used to do. I need to start making writing something more than my early morning routine before I go to work.

That means drafting query letters, sending in submissions and dealing with a lot of rejection for a while. And after enough casts, something will bite. It did for my friend Jeremy, and he’s already talking about his next project.

The last book I read also gave me some encouragement:

“As to why anyone embarks on the adventure of writing, which is that you write in order to find out not so much who you are as who you are becoming.” - Bernard-Henri Levy citing Michel Foucault’s idea in Public Enemies

I guess I see where this all takes me.