31 Days of Lessons Learned: Day Seven
Shut up and start writing!
My name is Dane Jackson and I’m a writer who doesn’t write. Sure, I blog here about what’s on my mind from time to time. I write movie reviews and features about the movie world. I even write about social media, pop culture and the literary world. I love doing all of these things and I want to continue doing all of them, but that writing is just distracting me from my real passion – writing fiction.
The fiction bug hit me in grade school where I would write science fiction action stories starring my two cats: Zoot and Adventure Cat. With a name like Adventure Cat, how could she not be a super hero? I even wrote fake tabloid newspapers about my fellow classmates in second grade (but I stopped doing that after two issues – it got me in a bit of trouble). My writing took a turn for the spooky once I discovered Stephen King and I guess you could say it’s all been downhill from there.
I continued writing short stories mainly through college…even took a couple creative writing classes. My Bachelor’s Degree is a Literature, Language, and Writing Degree and I got a job working for my dream company – Borders. I’ve been guiding myself along the path of author since I was a kid and here I sit on a Sunday night with nothing to show for it except this blog, an honorary mention for a short story I wrote, one complete NaNoWriMo manuscript, and lots of feature articles and reviews. I’m not bitter and I’m blessed to have the opportunities that I’ve had in terms of all the bands I’ve interviewed, authors I’ve met, etc.
I’m self-sabotaging my passion. If it’s not one excuse, it’s the other. I’m just finding distractions to keep myself from reading and to keep myself from writing. I’ve noticed, these excuses have increased since Borders closed, but blaming the closing of my favorite bookstore is just another excuse to add to the pile. If I’m not using that excuse, then I’m using the excuse that the book industry is changed…
When it all boils down with it, I think I’m just scared to fail, so I’m not even trying.
That isn’t like me.
After writing this post and wallowing in my own self-pity, today’s lesson is clear – SHUT UP AND START WRITING!
borrowed from justinlang.info
