To Quit or Not to Quit

I took the title of “writer” off of my profile today. It seemed like the right thing, after months of not being able to make progress and after some of the critiques I’ve had.  It was easier than it should have been.

After my last round of pills for  anxiety and depression, anything remotely like creativity dried up. I had nothing stirring around in this big, empty, wooden head of mine. Reading became a painful reminder of tasks undone and dreams not pursued. The more I read, the more I realized that maybe my trusted friend was right, maybe I should look at some of the other things I’m good at.  I’ll never forget that comment as long as I live. It felt like a curved sacrificial blade was slicing and pulling out my heart.

That became my reason for stopping, that I was no bloody good. My writing is not polished, it’s overly complicated, it’s amateurish. There was one nagging thing though, and like all things that are pushed down, it eventually resurfaced. The pull started again, the ideas.

I need to do it.  Good or awful.

There are a lot of reasons to quit something. It may come to nothing, it may be received with harsh criticism, it may have been done before (everything has)…but the drive, the need can’t be extinguished and so, to silence that inner demon, I’ll write. I’m not sure what yet. I’m not sure my manuscript is worthy of revisiting, but I’m going to do it for the satisfaction of having done it. I’m going to take the next steps to get the novice mistakes out of the way and even if the final product is bad, it’s mine. It’s work I’ve done, it’s sweat, tears, and emotions that needed exorcising.

What spurred me on tonight was an essay by another writer about the ten years she spent on a book that came to nothing but that everything had been worth it. Looking from the outside, it made so much more sense. Perseverance is a hard thing to practice when you’ve beaten yourself down and had no cheerleader in your corner,  but it’s the cornerstone of success. Even if I’m the Ed Wood of authors, I will have at least done what my inner self called me to do in order to be happy.

I’m not sure if I’m ready to reinstate my title of writer. I know that no matter what, I’m going to be writing in the quiet. I need to flex the muscles a bit more, but I intend on never quitting again, especially if it’s based on someone else’s opinions.

Britannia Rules

So, yes I’ve hit another fangirl moment. Funny how I can write all sorts of  personal stuff, but when it comes to something I really love, I get all verkelmpt and weepy. (I told you guys I was sentimental!) The story is, I finally got my passport! Despite my bad luck of late and my current inability to travel, I couldn’t be more excited. It’s the prospect of being able to finally get to the one place I’ve always wanted to be, Great Britain.

I happen to be an Angophile of epic proportions, which isn’t to say I’m all geeky about it. I tend to keep it to myself most of the time, but I can tell you all of the time I spend in my head is somewhere in, related to, or in some way based on the United Kingdom.  Ever since I first watched films from the moody Wuthering Heights, Oliver Twist, The Hammer films, and Sweeney Todd with Angela Lansbury to Mary Poppins and Shirley Temple meeting Queen Victoria in The Little Princess as a little girl, I’ve been in love with the place, the culture, and the people. To me, that’s the way people were supposed to be. I identified with all of it, much to the confusion of my parents. As a child I thought they were terribly clever having a woman president (little did I know) and found the culture to be everything I wanted to experience. Everywhere I looked I was in awe of the cleverness, the elegance,  the innovation, the discovery, the humor. I spent most of my growing years trying to be like them, though I can say that I’ve failed miserably in the end. (I heard myself speak on tape and I sound like a more punk rock version of the little mermaid, oh, the horror!) I don’t sound anywhere near as posh as I’d hoped. It doesn’t matter though. To love something, you don’t necessarily have to be of it.

My dream for years has been to finally make it there to the countryside of the Brontes to smell the air and feel the essence of the place, to see the Kent of Dickens and Whitby where Bram Stoker penned Dracula’s arrival in England and the place where Captain Cook hails from. To visit the places where my favorite books were written, to walk in the footsteps of the people I admired from the past and get a small sense of what it may have been like is what I look to. I want to see the haunted places, the infamous places, and the great buildings of history. Ancient buildings are something that we sadly don’t have much of on this side of the US where I live. 

Being a writer who’s stories tend to be based there, I don’t feel like I can do it justice from afar, no matter how much British television I watch or books I read. So, I’ve begun to look for contests for trips to finally make it there. I’ve entered one so far. It may be a long shot, but it offers me hope and, in the long run  the more I try the more the numbers will be on my side; or, I may just get extremely lucky. Now that I have my passport, it’s an open field of possibility that I’m supremely excited about.

The more I talk to people, the more I find that everyone has a passion, for different places of course, but everyone has that lifetime dream destination. One has a passion to visit Latin America, another, Italy, another finally made it to the Holy Land. As for me, I hope to be writing a post from mine soon. I apologize in advance for my gushing…