Double D's

Being an author is hard. Surprising right? I’ve wanted to be a full time author pretty much my whole life. Yet I’m in my thirties and I’ve only published one novella. That blows, but it’s totally my fault. Why haven’t I written more? Because I don’t have Double D’s. Discipline and Determination.

I have lots of ideas in my head and written down in sparkly notebooks all over my study. But I don’t have the discipline to sit down and write every day. I’ll either get distracted by another story idea, or napping, or watching wrestling (damn CM Punk’s mesmerizing thighs!). Then it’s time for me to go to bed and I’m either trying to stay up and work on a book or pissed off at myself for wasting a whole day where I could have been writing. This has been going on for the three years since Martini Seduction was published.

One of my many notebooks filled with incomplete stories.

I’ve also lacked the determination to say to myself, “You are going to be an author. You will write and promote yourself to make that dream come true.” Instead I kinda cringe when I think of trying to get people to read my stuff. I’ve got this whole internal monologue on how people don’t really like my writing and they’re just being nice when they say something positive about it. But from listening to one of my favorite podcasts, I’ve come to see that lots of creative people feel that way. My therapist said the same thing and that I just have to push past it. Of course I could have skipped paying my therapist and just gone to my dad. His words, “You can’t worry about what people think. If they don’t like it, so what! You’re the one who’s gonna be making money.” Oh, Big James! He’s so brusquely eloquent. I wish I could bottle his self-confidence and spray it on my face when I start imagining that invisible audience laughing at me.

Surprisingly, writing fanfiction has helped me to stop being a chicken shit wannabe author. I get positive reviews on my fics, with readers favoriting and following my stories. It finally clicked in my head that people wouldn’t take the time to interact with me like that if they didn’t like what I wrote. Duh.

So this has to end on a positive note, right? Otherwise it’s just me complaining and you wasting your time reading it. I’m taking steps to get those Double D’s. I’ve decided what book to write, rejoined my romance author memberships, and I’m working on creating a writing schedule that’s realistic. Can you believe I once planned to get up at 4 a.m. every day and write? Ha! That was a joke. And not surprisingly it didn’t last. Oh yeah, and I finally started this blog. With all that I think I’m on the right track. Go me! If you’ve got something you’ve wanted to do for a long time I hope that after reading this you get up off your ass and get started. 

Christa