Going forward as a writer

Writing fulfils me in ways that few things ever have. The artist in me is a writer or he is nothing, the creative impulse has only ever expressed itself in me through writing. Yet I write so little. 

 I want to write children’s books, to be a children’s author. Partly because I think I’ve got still got a fair connection to the boy I was, partly because I feel far more comfortable around kids than I do around adults, which is not to say that kids can’t unnerve me now, just as they did then.

Maybe it’s because many of my favourite moments in teaching have come from reading stories to kids – how much better would it be if I was reading them some of my own?!

 I’m not too old to be a successful writer. And success in writing, for me, is not such a huge thing – being read, finding an audience, would be a success. I don’t need to be a Mem Fox or a Paul Jennings or a John Marsden. Finding an audience for my work would be great and committing myself to that work!

I want to be a creative person, I want to be a writer, to let myself be expressed through my keyboard, to spend quite a bit of that time which remains to me making connections, connections that may stretch beyond my own brief journey. 

There is just one obstacle blocking my path to being a successful writer.

Me.

I have been lazy while writing takes effort, writing takes work, it takes sitting down at the keyboard and coming to it with real focus and intensity. It requires a decision to spend far less time playing games and far more time creating.

I know full well that I possess the capacity to write things that will attract and hold an audience. I know because I’ve done it before and because I have read enough to understand the rhythm of language. My understanding of that rhythm is good enough to trust, given a willingness to work hard at it.

Another truth: I am slowly building a scenario where the time will continue to be there to write, a successful tutoring business is developing and it’s not going to take that many hours compared to some other jobs. Additionally, it’s not impossible that some of my creative writing could earn money. Not lots of it, sure, but a few dollars here and there is a useful hobby.

The reason I haven’t written more is that I am afraid to do the work, afraid to open myself up and COMMIT to that relationship, to write with my whole heart, to let writing be the driving passion of my life other than my wife and family. 25 years ago, when I wrote those essays in my diary, I realised that writing had its hooks in me.

Ever since, I have played the coward, too scared to get out there and play, too afraid to do the work to make it happen.I haven’t truly engaged with my writing. Consequently, I have written nothing of consequence and allowed others, possibly no better than I, to connect with their audiences while I dreamed of having an audience.I didn't dream of finding an audience because finding an audience implies that you might do some work to find it!

Audiences don’t come to you through dreams, you have to build them, you have to commit to who you are and admit who you are. The only way to be a writer is to write. Every day that I live there is time available – turn the glass teat from something to suck into something to fill, be the breast, not the nipple.

Writers write, Lindsay Edmond, and for too long now, you have played at writing, afraid to commit yourself to it. WHY? It’s not like you’re committing yourself to anything else, you’re not going to be a politician, you’re not going to be a teacher and your tutoring business is very much a means to an end. A means you believe in, yes, but a means nevertheless.

Currently, when the time comes, all I have to say that I was here and was of some benefit to this world, is Kristy and Cassie. Not a worthless legacy, granted, but less than it might have been. 

If I reach my father’s age, will I be pleased I was a Bejeweled Blitz champion, will I gain great satisfaction from the hours spent on ICC after all my friends left?  Will I rejoice in how often I blasted the computer on Warcraft III as a human player? The obvious answer may be no, yet I give a different answer every time I play those time wasters.

 

I opened my blog post topics folder and there’s a good 50 potential posts listed there and this piece here is one that also belongs there – I’ve kept these types of pieces for my private journal, but the blog is the right place for many of them.

My blog doesn’t need to be focussed on a particular theme, if I write with consistency and passion then regular themes will develop over time and attract an audience. There are clearly some themes in that list of blog topics.

 Going forward, then, I must commit myself, I have the ideas for my blog, so I must seek to write something for it every day, not post every day, but write every day.

Ideas for writing more generally will come, I need to start writing down those ideas and then attempt to bring them to fruition, I recognise that the overwhelming majority of my initial attempts to write fiction will be shit, but out of  that manure will come compost for future writing crops.

I propose to post a minimum of 3 blog posts a week for the rest of the year, equalling a total of 21 blog posts by December 31.

My specific goal for longer term writing is to create a list of ideas to write about and to have made a start on some of them by the end of January.

The needs of my business actually will take some time up over that period but the time will be there, should I but choose to use it!

Either I choose to be a writer, or I choose to keep doing what I have done best, which is bullshitting myself and everyone else.  

You can’t write well with a strait jacketed soul.