Writing is It
I remember being around 13 years old and being bored out of my brain. I decided to go write my own story to entertain myself. I can’t remember it now, but I do remember the joy and freedom it brought me as I wrote through four or five hours of time until it was finished. I did this a few times.
I also remember a time when I was at the movies and struck by an epiphany. Someone writes the words that the actors are saying – they’re not making it up as they go. This was an extraordinary breakthrough for me.
I could write those words.
My son lent me the War of Art this weekend. I had read it years ago but I understood now that I had not absorbed it.
Without trying to raise any controversy, I feel it necessary to add here that I am not vaccinated against COVID and in my home state this means that I am unable to work in any industry until I get vaccinated. I have however had COVID and have applied for an exemption given that I have natural immunity.
Before reading the War of Art I had made two decisions.
- To get a job
- To get vaccinated
These decisions have been reversed and I’m only half way through the book.
I understood completely, for the first time in my life, that getting a job was out of fear and fear equals resistance. It was an excuse to somehow get ahead and get money and be safe and it has not worked out at all for my entire life and I have ended up in exactly the same position before I took or those and sometimes worse.
Getting vaccinated went against my ideals with the understanding being that it was not for my health, but rather an administrative function I must undertake in order to get a job.
Today I have decided against both of these courses of action. Today I embraced completely that I am a writer. As in the War of Art, I declare myself a professional writer. I have started my new routine and written my two thousand words for the day and am still going.
When I reflect on my life I see all the resistance that I have allowed to overtake my true desire. I’m turning 57 this year and time is literally running out for me to pursue my art.
So, I declare to you and myself that I allow ebay to sustain me from this point forward. I will have enough sales to cover all of my bills and food requirements, while I finish all the books and stories that I have started and publish them all.
The River Brings Them will be the first as I can schedule it out and get on with my other works while that is (hopefully) building my audience.
I look in wonder, astonishment and hope at all the writers making a living on this platform. If someone has achieved it, it is possible for me to do so as well. Success does leave clues.
But it fundamentally requires me to do the writing.
I am writing. I am facing the resistance and doing it anyway. To what end who knows but the possibility is there. I will not starve or be homeless. I will be guided and protected as I embrace my true nature.
Writing is it. It always was. Now, I’m really a writer.
