I began my writing journey the day after my aunt’s funeral. Strange, I know. I’ve wanted to be a writer my entire life and have tried to write in the past, but I always threw in the towel after a few days. I doubted that anyone would ever want to read what I wrote, and wondered why I thought I could write any better than anyone else. The stacks of doubts had climbed to mountains of various reasons of why it couldn’t be me that would succeed.
I measured myself by reviewing other writers books, blogs and social media pages thinking that I don’t have what it takes to be that good. And then I’d worry, what if it did work out and people saw my face and judged my writing, and everything I’ve done in my life up until this point. What if I just wasn’t good enough. Or what if I was, but only once. What if I wrote one thing that people liked never to write anything of value ever again.
You see, I had never even started writing and I was already convinced it wasn’t going to happen for me. The thing that I didn’t know back then, that I have learned through experience is that it doesn’t matter how good I am at writing. The accomplishment for me was in doing what I said I was going to do. Setting out to complete a monumental task that I had placed on my bucket list as a child. It was the journey of learning to write that was going to make me a better writer. I wasn’t just going to wake up one day and know how to string a sentence together that people were going to want to read. I had to wake up with the intent to write, and sometimes a good sentence or paragraph would find me.
After watching my aunt enter a hospital with a urinary track infection, only to pass away after spending two weeks attached to a ventilator, did I suddenly realize that I needed to work on writing my first book. Seeing my family grieve the unexpected loss of my aunt reminded me that life is too short to waste it on doubts. Someday it will be me in that hospital bed, and the feeling of regret that I would never make it as a writer would haunt me. The unknown, untapped potential would gnaw at my soul. It was in this moment that I realized I didn’t care if anybody read this book. It was more important that I complete a dream that I had envisioned as a child. A dream that no matter how many accomplishments I wracked up at work, it never dimmed.
I couldn’t tell that little girl inside of me that I had failed one more time. And somewhere in the act of writing, I realized, that showing up to write is half the battle. The feeling of doing something that I wanted to do that was difficult every day was forging a path of self development that I hadn’t realized that I needed. Each word count milestone was a testament to respecting myself. Each time I woke up early to write another 500-1,000 words I recognized a determination and discipline that I thought was not attainable for me. It was in this process of writing my first book that I recognized the creativity I held as a child was only a keystroke away as an adult.
Every morning I wake up to write is a day that I fulfill my dreams of becoming a writer. There is no good or bad writing for me, as long as I show up and complete the goals I set out to accomplish, I am honoring the little girl that lives inside of me.
I believe in you!
We got this!
Sandra Alynn