I'm back! A little bit rested and having spent some great time with friends and family. Plus a functional second bathroom, finally!
So now I'm looking over my list of New Year's Resolutions (mine are so fantastic, I reuse them year after year), trying to decide what to commit to for 2011... Lose weight? Eh, I did a little of that sort of recently. Maybe 2012. Exercise? Well, that's a pretty good one. But not too thrilling. Travel? Hmm... not really in the budget this year. Spend more time with family and friends? Sure, but....
Okay, it's time. Woman up. I'm 35 years old and the only thing I have consistently wanted to do since second grade is just what I am doing at this very moment, but to which I have never fully committed: writing.
Of course I blog. I have almost always written as a big part of my professional life, too. But it's not the same.
When I was in second grade I wrote a poem about a fire drill that got published in the Due West Elementary school 'literary magazine.' The first little thrill of being an author. By middle school, whenever I was immersed in a book, I felt that one day it would be me behind the typewriter, telling stories. I even took creative writing classes in college while I was an English major.
But then something happened. Somehow the confidence I'd always had in myself and my abilities waned. Maybe it was watching my mom struggle helplessly in an abusive situation with her second husband, unable to escape in part because she lacked the ability to support herself financially. Or maybe it was just plain old fear of failure.
Something told me I needed to work on my Plan B -- get an MBA, find a 'real job,' etc. I have been balancing between two worlds, two ways of experiencing life and career, ever since. And while I have enjoyed the journey immensely, lately I've caught the little girl who wrote the fire drill poem scowling in my general direction. What did you do to us? she asks. Why didn't you believe in me?
It's kind of hard getting a psychological smack-down from your seven-year-old self, believe me. There are other voices, speaking just as loudly, saying things like "If you haven't done it by now, you never will," or "It's a waste of time," or the most hurtful, "Maybe you used to be talented, but you've wasted it, and now there's no point."
Well, in 2011 I am going to fight back against those voices. The plan is to sit down, for better or worse, and write a novel. A whole novel. Not The Great American Novel (Franzen has already cornered that market, thank goodness, taking the pressure off), but just a decent story that would be something I'd want to read myself.
So what if it's mundane or terrible? So what if no one reads it? So what if I find out that my lifelong, quiet dream is just that -- a dream? Any of that is better than looking back later in life and realizing that I never even gave myself a chance to fail.
Here's the plan. My official goal is to have a complete, possibly terrible, novel written and revised, ready to publish in some form by the end of 2011. Actually, I'd like to have it done much sooner than that, but I want some wiggle room for the unexpected. And I'm telling you to give myself some accountability. Now that it's 'out there,' I have to do it, right?
I will try to blog about my progress as I go - along with the usual random crap characteristic of this blog.
So what are your resolutions this year? Are you pretty content with your life as it is? Or do you -- like I -- have a hidden ambition gathering dust in the corner of your life?
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