Those who can’t do, teach. It appears this insulting maxim may actually be true in my case – at least when it comes to this year’s 20Time project.
This spring, I assigned myself the challenge of writing an original work of fiction. One month in and this is, by far, the hardest of all my previous projects.
In the past few weeks, I’ve read a variety of books for inspiration – Fresh Ink, On Writing, and Ramona Quimby, Age 8. I’ve also written nearly 10,000 words, only to delete 9,700 or so. At first, the struggle was knowing what to write about. Now that I’ve decided on the characters and story (more on that in a future post), progress has been painful.
I want to write. Really. For the past two weeks, I’ve been up at 5 a.m. to force an hour of writing before my day begins and…the words don’t come. The cursor blinks, waiting, mocking. On days when I do actually tap out some words, they’re just awful.
I’m starting to think maybe I’m not cut out to be a writer.
Maybe this is the first 20Time where I fail.
And maybe that’s okay?
So this is where I am – filled with respect for the published authors of the world while staring at my wall. I don’t know. I still have two months to go. We’ll see what happens.