'Writing'. What a wonderfully ambiguous and mysterious profession. I remember reading my first real novel as a child and thinking, "This is it - this is what I want to do. I want to spend my life putting great words to paper and making stories out of them." At the time, it seemed that was all I needed: to decide that that was the direction I was heading in and, like an aspiring policeman or dentist or teacher or accountant, go off to get whatever prescribed training I needed before launching myself into a career.
As it turns out, it's not quite as simple as that. Instead, following that absolute certainty of purpose, my road to my dream job thus far has been filled with years of writing stalemates, dead-in-the-water short and long stories, hair-pulling plot frustrations, and plugging away at a degree towards a day-job that'll hopefully pay the bills and put food in the fridge. And after all this, here I am at 23 years old, practically living off of mac 'n cheese, sporting 1.5 post-secondary degrees and until recently, still without a glimmer of any sort of publishing credit to my name. To say the least, not at all what I used to imagine whenever I'd drift off on an idealist's daydreams, imagining life as a Lee Harper or a Mark Twain or a Jules Verne (discounting, of course, the mac 'n cheese, which remains delicious in any circumstance).
Do I wish then that the whole process would speed the heck up, and stop being so unbelievably frustrating and drawn-out and full of false-starts?... Not for a second.
Uh-oh. I feel a paradox coming on.
Strange indeed, but true. If this mess were easy, I get the impression this would feel more like a rainy-day hobby than a life's dream... though I might also have dodged getting my first few premature grey hairs. But that's besides the point.
Today, I received my very first acceptance letter for a short piece of creative non-fiction, which informed me of its impending publication in the online January 2014 issue of TWJ Magazine. And in the middle of feeling so light that I half expect to lift out of my desk chair and float away at any moment, I'm reminded of a quote by C.S Lewis:
"With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere."
So here's to that beginning, which I've decided to salute with this blog - a place to rant about and happily plow through the endlessly torturous and fantastically rewarding mess known as the creative process. Here goes nothing - let's see where we end up.
Image courtesy of thaikrit/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
As it turns out, it's not quite as simple as that. Instead, following that absolute certainty of purpose, my road to my dream job thus far has been filled with years of writing stalemates, dead-in-the-water short and long stories, hair-pulling plot frustrations, and plugging away at a degree towards a day-job that'll hopefully pay the bills and put food in the fridge. And after all this, here I am at 23 years old, practically living off of mac 'n cheese, sporting 1.5 post-secondary degrees and until recently, still without a glimmer of any sort of publishing credit to my name. To say the least, not at all what I used to imagine whenever I'd drift off on an idealist's daydreams, imagining life as a Lee Harper or a Mark Twain or a Jules Verne (discounting, of course, the mac 'n cheese, which remains delicious in any circumstance).
Do I wish then that the whole process would speed the heck up, and stop being so unbelievably frustrating and drawn-out and full of false-starts?... Not for a second.
Uh-oh. I feel a paradox coming on.
Strange indeed, but true. If this mess were easy, I get the impression this would feel more like a rainy-day hobby than a life's dream... though I might also have dodged getting my first few premature grey hairs. But that's besides the point.
Today, I received my very first acceptance letter for a short piece of creative non-fiction, which informed me of its impending publication in the online January 2014 issue of TWJ Magazine. And in the middle of feeling so light that I half expect to lift out of my desk chair and float away at any moment, I'm reminded of a quote by C.S Lewis:
"With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere."
So here's to that beginning, which I've decided to salute with this blog - a place to rant about and happily plow through the endlessly torturous and fantastically rewarding mess known as the creative process. Here goes nothing - let's see where we end up.
Image courtesy of amenic181/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
No comments:
Post a Comment