Uninspired

Writing when you feel uninspired is like climbing a loose, rocky hillside to reach your awaiting dinner. Very much a difficult necessity. This 30 day challenge is keeping me motivated. I have lapsed two days so far, but the simple fact that I committed to this is why I am here now, writing.

I do not fancy myself some talented writer, gifted by the gods themselves, but it is one of the things I wanted to be when I grew up. I might actually have been good at it, had I commitment to the craft. I remember being in sixth grade, writing this completely terrible who-dunnit titled, "Murder in the Sixth Grade". It was bad. Mysteries were never my genre and to this day I don't tend read them. What was I thinking?

After writing a few chapters, I decided to see if a publisher would be interested in it. I opened one of the books I had been reading and copied down the address of the publisher. I then wrote a letter and with big dreams of grandeur sent in the first chapter. I would be the first sixth grader ever to publish a best seller! 

I waited.

I wrote.

I waited.

I wrote some more.

I ran out of ideas after the group of sixth graders found foot prints in the barn.

I abandoned my book.

Then the letter came. It was probably the most encouraging rejection letter anyone ever received. He even gave me the very good advice to find a literary agent. Most of all, he encouraged me to write. And to keep writing.

As I grew up, my writing went from short stories, to dreary and and dreadful poetry. Oh I thought I was a wonderful talent. Until I read my best friends poetry, then everything I ever wrote ever was crap and I was crap and I went all Sylvia Plath on that shit.

Over the years I have written here and there, but basically I gave up on my dream to be a writer. The world is probably better off having not been inflicted with even more bad fiction, but I do wonder. If I had committed to the work, would I have made something of my previous passion? Could I have been good? 

So I may lapse a day here or there in this challenge. But as tonight's post is evidence of, sometimes the hardest part of climbing that rocky hill, is getting started. The rest is seeing it through to the end.