All Talk, No Action
Are you doing what you want to do, or talking about what you’re going to do?
For the longest time, I wanted to take up a musical instrument. I don’t know — a flute, maybe a saxophone — I never firmly narrowed that down. I am part of a musical family and it seemed quite natural to follow in the musical footsteps to some degree. In the early years of my schooling, I said I wanted to play an instrument, so I signed up with the school music department to borrow an instrument and start taking group lessons. For reasons I don’t recall, that program fell through the cracks and I never did get my hands on a flute, a saxophone or even a kazoo. Time passed and I convinced my parents that guitar lessons should be my entry into the world of music. They borrowed a guitar from someone they knew and signed me up for lessons with a local-yokel who knew little about teaching the guitar and nothing about teaching a guitar to a left-handed student. After a year of zero progress, everyone concerned thought it was time to stop that nonsense. Today, many years later, I still can’t carry a tune in a bucket. And, I have to confess, the thrill is gone. I’ve lost interest, lost any kind of momentum, lost my zest for music. Would things have been different if I had actually put honest effort behind my self-proclaimed desire for learning to play an instrument? The world will never know. All I know is, I talked a lot, acted very little and, in the end, enjoyed zero level of accomplishment.
As I reflect on the years of my life where I felt a strong desire to write, I can trace a similar pattern. I wrote stories, poems, journal entries and such in my elementary and high school years. I didn’t push myself further by writing for the school newspaper or making any efforts to expose my efforts to the public. People knew I liked to write but few, if any, saw many of my words on a printed page. In college, a place where, as I look back with 20/20 vision, I could have taken advantage of a slew of writing courses and opportunities for advancement of my skills, I chose instead to focus on social sciences, foreign language skills and an assortment of personal interest topics. I wasted a golden opportunity to learn and a golden opportunity to write. After college, I would dabble in my writing dream off and on. I enjoyed telling friends and colleagues that I was a romance writer, even though my efforts never garnered more than a rejection letter from every major and minor romance novel house on the planet. (To my minor credit, I will say — I did actually finish a romance novel — only to shred it page by page some ten years after writing it. I think I knew its worth)
For a significant number of years after that, I wrote virtually nothing. Certainly nothing of any significance. And then, one day, I was bitten by my writing muse once again. So far, it seems to be sticking with me. I am not famous or financially self-sufficient because of it by any means — and may never be. That’s okay. I write because it is in me to so do. I have had small successes here and there. Every time I make a sale, even a small one, I am on Cloud 9 for days. I am writing more now than I ever have before. I have finally found a level of satisfaction.
I don’t talk to many people about my writing. Only to those who understand the will and the desire to express oneself through the written word. I dare say, there are many who know me who have no idea about this alter ego inside of me. And maybe this is finally the answer I’ve been looking for. I don’t have to talk about what I want to do or who I want to be. I just wake up in the morning and do my thing — which is, basically, to write. How far it will take me remains to be seen. I am finished with telling the world I am a writer. I am a writer when, and only when, I am actually writing. Verbalizing my desire to write only makes me a talker. Taking action to create complete sentences for the world to read — that is what makes me a writer.
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