Don't know what you're made of till the one thing that you want is coming with the dawn.

Listening To: Syndicate by The Fray
Feeling: Thoughtful.

"...Halfway around the world
Lies the one thing that you want
Buried in the ground
Hundreds of miles down
The first thing that arises in your mind when you awake
Is bending you till you break
Let me hold you now..."

Flash posted a serious thought about her art recently, and I've been feeling lately that I should be posting something serious now instead of a bunch of memes and posts talking about the length of my hair. Because, honestly, I'm not one of those people. I don't want to be. I am really serious, here, and when I changed the title of this blog, that was meant to bring the rest of the changes.

If any of you Follow my Twitter, you know that I have recently come out of my writer's block - hopefully for real this time - and that I have a plot and a whole book idea, as well as a title, all lined up in my mind. For a long time, when I would start to write short stories and then trash them after about 3,000 words of what I just wasn't pleased with, I was so worried. So anxious. Enough that it would literally make me sick to my stomach. I grew out of the thought that "What if I'm supposed to be an artist?" because I honestly don't believe I am. As much as I love it and as much as it makes me happy, I can't ever imagine doing it for a living. I don't have the passion for it like Flash has, or like the passion that I have for writing.

I thought I may have lost my touch. I had gone too long without writing and any scrap of talent that I had, had gone, thrown to the wind. I hadn't tried hard enough to break out of my writer's block, and looking back, all the books I had written had characters that were one-dimensional and had an utter lack of personality. The plot was thin and frail, and I would go off into random directions or fill it with a bunch of senseless jabber. Everything was so horrible, looking back on it, that I wasn't quite sure that I was meant to be a writer after all.

The thing is, with writing, like Flash, I have always pressured myself in it. I had a set limit of words that I had to write a day, and if I wrote less than, it made me a failure. It made the book or project I was working on a failure. Even so, I would always be so excited and happy while writing down the jabber, and I never doubted for a moment that it would fail or not get published if I would ever try to write it.

Listening To: Enemy by Flyleaf

"...I have made you an enemy
I have been my own enemy
I am asking for you
To forgive me
For everything
If you don't
You're worthy of compassion
If you do..."

It sounds egotistical; it sounds horrible, to type that for anyone to see. Honestly, though, I never thought about it that way; I thought about it like I was just never afraid to put it out there, no matter what. Even now, I'm not afraid to write a book and try to get it published one day. But I also realize that the chances of it getting rejected are probably better than it getting accepted.

All you have to do is try, though; you should not be afraid of failure. Being afraid of failure will cripple you and the weight will be heavy on your shoulders until you bow down to it and give up. I will never be that way.

I will not be afraid of failure.

I will embrace love, I will embrace hate, I will embrace acceptance, and I will embrace failure.

Even if I died without getting a single book published, I would know all my life that I wrote, which is what I wanted to do the most. The thing that's closest to my heart and that I simply cannot live without; I must write. To stop writing permanently would be for me to die. I've never been so committed or passionate about anything in my life as much as I have about being a novelist. Like the quote of author Issac Asimov, "If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster."

Though it probably seems a little depressing, something that's been bouncing around in my head lately that I heard a long time ago was, "I can't miss what I never had." So, if for some reason, I were never to become a novelist, I couldn't miss it. But if I stopped writing altogether - afraid of failure - then that, I would be able to miss.

I am excited about the fact that I have a plot and am going to start writing on my book today or tomorrow. I know now - in my heart, soul, mind, bones - that despite whatever writer's block or whatever doubts I may have, I am supposed to be a writer. This will never change.

But I do think I will become a novelist. Even if I have to try and self-publish it the first time, I will do it.