Dec. 19, 2001

I haven’t been holding back at all the past several days. I’ve created a scary amount of momentum and accomplished things that used to be just ideas floating in my mind. I’ve finally spent time working on my portfolio, I’ve been working on launching two sites, and I’ve been writing like mad for another writing project whose deadline is January 01st. I’ve been doing and doing and doing.

It feels bloody fabulous.

That’s not to say that I have put in 13-hour days or broken any records for the most amount of work in one hour – I haven’t. In fact, one day I didn’t do more than hours worth of anything, let alone writing. On that particular day, I couldn’t do much of anything at all, so I didn’t. But the next day when I thought about all that I could do, I did it all.

I’ve just felt so completely liberated since I examined things and figured out where my head was. The clarity has been the best Christmas present I could have ever asked for. I realise now that things are just so simple, so easy to see. I think my fear was manifesting everything into a big complicated mess. Fear is a bugger like that.

That’s why I created that poster yesterday. I truly believe that if you want to be a writer, the only thing you have to do is write. There is no path to follow, no test to pass, no course to take, no lifestyle to follow. You just have to write. Plain and simple.

The quote by Edison along with creating the poster yesterday has just given me back my friendship with freedom and allowed me to write as I need to. No more reading every book on how to write, no more playing tricks to get me to write, no more trying to create schedules that don’t work anyway, no more talking about writing or how I feel about writing. No more fear of failing or not living up to some kind of imagined expectations. No more fluff. Just writing.

When I mentioned this to Chris he said to me, “Sounds like you finally meshed the two.”

“The two what?” I said.

“Your life and your writing. You’ve been keeping them pretty separate.”

“Writing is my life.” I said back to him.

“No,” he said, “It’s been your job. You’ve treated it different. Your personal, kick ass, simple, real logic that you have in your every day life hasn’t been applied to your writing life. You’re always full of confidence but when it came to writing it seemed to vanish. You seemed to vanish. But it looks likes now how you are in your every day life and how you work in that is being applied to your writing. You’re writing now instead of you trying to be somebody who writes.”

I hadn’t ever thought of it that way but I can completely see it now. Before I had felt that just simply writing wasn’t enough to make someone a writer. I thought I had to do “writer” things and follow a “writers” path so I tried to create some kind of form and function to follow. I tried to give power to myself via someone else. But the truth is, I was a writer all along for the mere fact that I wrote.

I don’t, however, feel like such a dumbass for not realising that any sooner. After all Dorothy didn’t find out either until she had gone on a huge colourful journey too.

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