WRITING

Are You Frustrated with Your Performance on Medium?

This is not the time to doubt yourself

They are weather-worn and borrowed, these wings, with the crumpled lacy edges, moth-mangled centers like eyes, wide-open for the wind to pass right through

aloft-no more, I think

Well, they must do. ~ Away, Chistina M. Ward

Ever feel like you may have been duped? Like you came, you bought the big idea, the big dream, like a river trout gobbling up the lure? Suddenly, the big dream seems to be swooshing downriver and there you are, hooked and hanging from a string.

Yeah, I did it. I bought it. The whole — write it and they will come — theory. I had big dreams of that one article just taking off. Going viral. Saving my finances from the toilet in which they are circling the drain.

Two years. It hasn’t happened.

It’s ok to be disappointed when they don’t come; the readers, I mean. It may not be any bearing at all on what kind of a writer you are, how talented, or gifted or what-have-you. It is not about you, really. Or your words. Or your voice or that crazy cat-lady muse that lives in the basement of your mind.

It’s about timing. And luck. And having the right article in the right place at the right time. And I am here to say, you can do it all right, so right, and still not catch your big break here. I ask you, can you not still enjoy the rushing cool waters? The ideas hiding — look there! — just beneath that next rock, around that next bend, or in the exhilaration of that next waterfall?

Writing must, and I mean it absolutely must be about your own curiosity. Your own mindful exploration of life, so infectious that you drag others along with you. When you chase the shiny silver thing at the end of a line, it may look good, intoxicating even, but you must stay grounded in the very thing you love: the craft.

Chase your craft, not the dream. Chase your life, enthusiastically. Dig. Burrow. Toss parts of yourself into the air and see how the sun picks out your colors. Roll in it. Sing it. Live it.

Then write it. That’s what makes them come.

Who cares if that “big one” ever hits, if the journey is this damned beautiful? Let the river take you where it may.

Christina M. Ward is just a small fish in a big river. But come on in, the water’s lovely.