June 08, 2001
When I first started to write on the website, I wrote with enthusiasm and excitement. I felt I was moving forward. However, over the last few days I’ve been dreading having to report anything.
I feel like I just keep writing the same things over and over, or I’m up one day and completely flustered the next. I feel like if I don’t write some amazing accomplishment down, everyone will find out that in fact I should have remained in the office. My insecurities, my fears, and my lack of progress, my worry on how many times I’ve used the word “overwhelmed” have made me feel very small in terms of writing.
I’ve made such an open and honest declaration of living out a dream that I feel so responsible to do that now. Not just for me but for others who are afraid in some small way too. I want to prove that when your heart calls you, you have to listen. But how can I show that when I’m just as scared as anyone else?
I am starting from scratch here. For the past twenty years I have lived so linear and worked so hard to bury any creative feelings. Creativity was always seen as unproductive and selfish and so I shed away from it and have, in some regards, forgotten how to loosen up artistically. I don’t have any author friends, so I’m not sure how they write or what feelings they have and if mine are normal. I don’t know the process of writing, and so I’m unsure if I’m going about it right or wrong, or if there is such a thing.
Also I feel unproductive. At an office I could see the pay off of my work; collated copies, phone messages, emails returned, stacks of paper work completed and a very nice paycheque every two weeks. But with writing, how do you know? Is the only way to know that you’ve done something is to publish something? If it is, I’m in trouble.
When I met SARK the other night, I took that as some kind of sign that I was going in the right direction. After awhile I started to doubt it. I started to think what if she is kind to everyone like that, what if it was just polite talk, what if she was sincere and thinks I have potential, yet I don’t have anything to show. The more I thought about that event, the more I started to sink into negative feelings. I became less productive over the last few days. I think I was paralyzed by fear and self doubt.
I started to want some kind of concrete evidence, some kind of proof, that writing is what I should be doing. Instead of just believing it is, instead of just recognizing the feeling I get when I’m writing from my head to my toes, I wanted some kind of validation that I hadn’t made a mistake by quitting my corporate job. Of course, that’s silly, I thought. You don’t get proof just like that.
So this morning instead of writing, I decided to look at my website statistics page to see how people are finding me. I saw a link that I hadn’t seen before and so I clicked on it and it took me to a website that had nothing to do with my website at all. In fact, it was a horoscope site with a reading for Aquarius’s, which I am. I almost never read horoscopes because they’re just usually a lot of made up talk. Yet for some reason I ended up reading that one and it said:
Talk about a kick in the ass. As silly as it may seem it was the motivation that I needed. It has given me a little hope that all these emotions and fears that I have can be made useful.
I’ll keep working, I’ll keep typing or manually writing. I’ll continue to work on my mock up book and submit things to magazines. I’ll try to remember that right now, I need to go for progress and not perfection. That perhaps I can’t control the outcome or the when and where, but I can control the effort. And I will make one hell of an effort, because I believe in all of this.
June 07, 2001
I think when people hear of others living their dream, something inside them awakens. They start to have the ideas of their dream, and what can they do to achieve that. And that ripple effect is amazing.
However, I’m starting to find people who can some times trivialize the whole process. Some people think that because I’ve chosen to live my dream as a writer, things must be full of glitter and cloud nine moments.
For the most part, I must confess, it is. I am a lot happier now, I’m much more relaxed, my confidence is back, I’m more passionate and alive, and I don’t feel like I have some corporate entity sucking the life out of me. I feel like I am finally on the right track.
However, there have been major changes. For one, I gave up a very nice income which means fewer vacations, less disposable income and less savings. But there are things now that I need to do that are financial; get a small used laptop, do some legal work, get a larger flat so I can have some kind of office (this means more rent.)
Also, there I feel a lot of pressure to prove that what I’m doing is real and worthwhile. I feel pressure to become something amazing. Every day that I’m at home working, I wonder if it’s enough.
There’s a lot of uncertainty that comes along with my choice to be a writer, and that’s a very scary thing at times. I have the days where anything I write doesn’t seem good enough, and I ask myself why have I chosen this again?
At this point, I don’t regret making the choice at all. I feel that this is the right time in my life to do this, and something will come of it. That I’m sure of. But the road to getting there is hard.
At first, the work involved in living my dream scared me away from the attempt. To me, that was just straight pitiful. With the up’s there are the downs. As long as you’re realistic, determined and hard working, there is no reason that whatever you want cannot be achieved.
It just takes a little effort, and one hell of a lot of patience.
June 05, 2001
One of the steps of making my writing real is making it legal.
I have been spending the morning trying to find out how to become a legal writer with regards to taxation, copyright and trademarks. I have been trying to learn my rights and my responsibilities.
This is a little more than I anticipated – having this form to fill out and file and this fee to pay. It’s completely overwhelming with all the paperwork and money involved. I’m not even sure what the right steps to take are, or if I’m looking in the right direction.
All I want to do is write – not file forms all day.
I wish there was a website called “getting published 101″ where it contained all that I needed to know. And when you clicked on a link, a little man would ring you on the phone and declare, “Everything had been taken care of for you. Feel free to just write now!”
I have to do this though, I have to start comprehending things. I remember when I was around 15, I had written a story and submitted it to a magazine. I never heard from them, but 8 months later my story was in their magazine. However, the main characters name was changed, the city was changed and the authors name was changed. Other than that, it was my story word for word. I didn’t know how to protect myself that time, and this time, I want to be prepared.
I have found the following links:
June 04, 2001
The first thing I wrote on the website was a thank you letter. In that letter I wrote, “On Monday, I am going to give notice at my job. I am not going to be a corporate girl. I am going to trust the universe and be a writer.” When I wrote that, I don’t know how much I actually believed that if I followed my heart, my calling, my passion that it would actually work out. I had a lot of doubt about the whole ‘trusting the universe’ thing. I had no way of knowing if it was a gimmick or if it would really work.
It works. I am here to tell you that I am living proof that following your heart works.
On the day that I gave notice to my job, I called SARK’s voicemail line that she has printed in her books. For some reason I felt a huge need to thank her. I had never met her but she had been a huge influence, a role model, a guide, and in some twisted way, a friend. I felt if anyone understood the struggle to listen to your heart, the challenge of living your dream, and the desire to write she would. So I left her a message saying how she had affected me and how I was now on a journey to some day be a writer as well. I told her that I wanted to go from being “Alex the Girl” to “Alex the Woman” and that by becoming a writer, I just might be able to do that. At the end of the message I left her my website address.
A few weeks after leaving the message I found out that SARK was going to be on a book signing tour in my city. Of course I had to go.
Tonight Chris and I went to listen to her speak about her new book. For a little over an hour, she spoke, she laughed, and she shared parts of her book, her ideas and bits of life. What I loved most was when she would giggle at herself.
After she spoke, the book signing process began. I was one of the last people in a very long line and stood in it for around forty-five minutes. The bookstore people would periodically walk down the line and say, “She won’t be here much longer, so you might not get to see her.” My heart sank when I would hear them say that because I felt that I had to see her. Not just to have my book signed, but because of another reason I wasn’t exactly sure of.
To help speed up the line process, an assistant came out and asked us our names that we wanted to have SARK sign in our books. She asked me what my name was, I told her, and on a bright pink post it note she wrote:
The nearer I got to SARK, the more this feeling inside me grew that I had to add “the girl” under my name. Standing in line I couldn’t see a pen anywhere so I thought that was a sign to just leave my name as Alex. I promise that as soon as I said that, I saw a pen right beside me on the counter.
What the hell I thought and under A L EX I scribbled:
A few minutes later I got up to SARK and handed her my book. She opened it up and saw the bright pink post it note and in a loud and excited voice said, “You’re Alex the Girl?”
“Yes,” I said rather stunned.
“I know you!” She exclaimed. “You left a wonderful voicemail for me awhile ago, didn’t you?”
“Yes I did” I smiled back.
“I loved it! I saved it and listened to it a few times. It was wonderful! I wanted to contact you but I’ve been so busy with everything.”
I, the girl that has a witty retort and the oh so amazing conversational skills said nothing. I was stunned. She knew me? She recognised my name? The only thing I could think to say back was “Well I can imagine you’ve been super busy, I understand.” (This is why I think perhaps it is a good thing I want to be a writer and not a people greeter.)
She said, “You should have told me sooner who you were! I’ve been to your website, I love it! What you’re doing is fabulous! Really!”
“Thank you,” I said. “So you got my thank you message, I am really glad.”
“Yes I did. Please contact me again, I want to hear from you.” She said with a smile and sturdy eyes that I’m sure twinkled no less than Santa’s ever could have.
“Thank you,” I said and shook her hand.
In a daze I went to find my husband. “She knew me,” was all I could sputter out to him.
To have someone whose work I admire, who probably has gone through everything I am going through right now, tell me they liked my work, was incomprehensible to me. It made me feel like I was on the right track.
On the drive home, Chris & I were talking and I told him that perhaps the universe would come through after all. When I got home, I had emails from two people who I’ve been waiting to hear back from. I wrote them about some writing opportunities and they had responded. It seems like all this writing is becoming real. You can’t imagine how overwhelming that feeling is.
Tonight I just had complete validation for what I’m doing. I know now that this is real. The encouragement, the meeting with people, the talking, the living it all out, is such an amazing thing. I think that’s why I am so glad to have the website, to show that when you choose to accept your dream, it really does come true. Who would have thought?
June 03, 2001
Since I have been working at home, most people don’t think that I am actually working. Even though I pound away on the keyboard all morning, write down abstract ideas all the time, and submit things for publication, people tend to think that because I am not 9-5′ing in an office, that I just sit around at home all day and sometimes do a little thing called writing.
“Now that you’re not working, we can go on vacation for a week or two!” my husband said to me. Although I wanted to go, I had concerns about taking off for so long. How would I write? How would I continue to make contacts? How would I keep my momentum going?
I thought I would somehow figure it all out and so for one week, we went on holiday. I wrote a couple of times that trip, got some really good ideas for some new writing projects, and felt I had made some progress in my endeavors. However, that all ended by the third day of our travels and for the rest of the trip I didn’t write. “I’m on holiday,” I would think, “I can’t work!”
Upon coming home from our trip, some friends said to me, “Now that you’re not working, you can come and stay with me and help me with some things!” I thought about it and thought that I did have the time now and I thought I could find some time to write while I’m there. So off I went and stayed with my friends for a few days, but was so tired at the end of each day, I didn’t even write in my journal.
When I came home from that trip, my in-laws had arrived from out of town for a few days. “Now that you’re not working,” they said, “We can finally spend some time with you!”
Between shuffling them to and from the hotel and to every tour company known to God, my energy for writing had vanished.
I had all these things popping up, imposing on my time as a writer. It had messed up my pattern, my work habits, and my train of thought.
It’s not that I didn’t want to write – I did. It’s not that I couldn’t write – I could have. But I had “when I get around to it” going through my . I had “when I get the time” going through my . I had, “when things settle down” going through my . But I think the most important thing I had going through my was the same thoughts as everyone else: “Since I’m not working anymore…”
Even though I had declared a month ago that I wanted to write for a living, it has taken me a month to realise that this really is my job. It’s taken me a month to realise that if I don’t work, if I don’t try, if I don’t focus, then nothing happens. This is my job now.
So tonight when my mum in law said, “now that you’re not working, are you going to write?” I was able to reply without hesitation, “I am working, now that I am writing.”
Elsewhere