Setting: My bedroom. I sit at my desk, my back to my sixteen-year-old cat napping on the bed I made as best I could while trying not to disturb him. Three pairs of shoes wait patiently in a crooked line for me to finish bringing them to the closet. A neat stack of clean shirts hangs over my keyboard piano, second in the queue of laundry duty.
There’s a lot I could be doing instead of writing. That’s what I told myself for a very long time, and it’s true. There certainly is. But today is the day I’ve decided I’m going pro.
I remember the day a friend of mine told me she was “going pro.” The transformation from writing as a hobby to writing as a habit, carving nonnegotiable writing time into her schedule and sticking to it regardless of physical, mental, or emotional disparities. Getting the words on the page is the only way to get it done, after all.
She said it with such conviction. I could feel the power behind her words, the edge of tenacity’s blade being honed by the statement. I was proud, inspired. She made a promise to the universe in that moment, a captain changing course in her life journey. She was ready.
I simply was not.
There were reservations, phantoms of false doubt and fear of creation casting shadows over the blank page. Never mind all the unhoused shoes.
So I tucked my writing away for a long winter’s nap, and for quite a while navigated phases of peace and guilt, anxiety and contentment, about where I was in my writing journey. I had several bursts of inspiration and created for a short spell, but they soon fizzled out and left me holding an ashen bag of mixed emotions. Eventually, after much prayer, reflection, and a wayward tear or two, I realized that my dormancy was necessary, critical even, to my journey as a whole, and then there truly was peace. For a myriad of reasons both seen and unseen, I was to put my energies elsewhere in that chapter of my life, and I released all expectations of the timeline I had been clinging to so tightly.
Now that time is over.
I am finally at a place in my personal evolution where I feel ready to go pro. To come to the keyboard with resolve, a clean, creative mind, and fearless of failure.
For just showing up, even if it’s just for you, especially if it’s just for you—is the greatest success. That is the cake, my friends. Everything else is just icing.
A handful of lessons I learned while in my dormancy:
Be nicer to myself. I have a propensity to be hypercritical of my work to the point where if it isn’t to my high standard, I delete it. Instead, I will be kinder to myself and treat myself just as I would any other writing peer or friend. I will hit Publish, even if it isn’t “perfect.”
We’ll clean it up in post. I have work to do on this one. I will write a paragraph, then suffer over it for hours before progressing to the next step. I will now work in levels, and level one is get the words on the paper.
Don’t let the dust bunnies become the monsters under your bed. By going pro, you don’t wait for the house to be spotless or anything else to write. Just stop what you’re doing and take the time. If you do, you might as well wait for the next Pluto transit.
Do it your way. You have to find the way that works for you. The only requirement is that you have to actually do it. I don’t have to publish right away on some blog or feel rushed into the next phase of the project. Just enjoy and have fun, be creative and exercise my imagination, and hit Publish when it’s ready–just be sure to hit the bloody button.
I have a few writing goals this year:
- Revise the first novel of my series. The roadblock to this gargantuan task has been sheer ignorance of how in the blazes to go about that in a streamlined, organized, checkpoint-oriented fashion, so I am taking a revision course through the Writing Mastery Academy on how to do just that.
- Get a draft done of the second novel. The second novel’s been a blast to work with the few bouts I’ve had with it, and I will strive to get at least an initial draft done of it in 2025.
- Stick to the plan. I have carved out NNWT (nonnegotiable writing time) and have set word count goals to meet. This will help hold me accountable and keep me on track. Having a set direction is paramount to my success.
I will come here to share my writing journey, as well as fun little tidbits of my creations along the way.
If you’ll please excuse me, it’s time for cake.
Concisely Claire 