Kelly Gibbons, artist and writer, about me

Wednesday, March 03, 2004

I'm a Swinger.
Did I get your attention? Well I'm not that kind of swinger! Yesterday I found a park in the woods and I very much enjoyed swinging on the swing.

I have only been a writer for 6 months. That is an important statement to make. And I think the most important word there is ONLY. I forget that at times and I beat myself up for not knowing everything.

Since I knew nothing about the business of writing when I started, I have to say that I have learned a tremendous amount about it in the past six months. When I started, the only thing I knew was that I loved to write and I wanted to earn a living doing it.

I get down on myself for not being "more." I don't know why I expected to know everything by now, but I do, or did. Over the past few days I have been looking at the trials and tribulations of other beginner writers and I see that I am in right about where I sold be at this point. Seems I'm not so different then I thought I was.

I'm not so sure when I put this heavy demand on myself that I had to succeed fast or I wouldn't be considered a success. To me, not earning tons of money at this or getting tons of offers meant that I was just another struggling writer. I pretend that I don't but I still have the mind frame that success=money. I am the one who has put a time limit on this. I am the one who thinks that I need to be perfect and see results right away or it is an indication that I am a failure. I am also the one who can stop this.

This thinking has made me not want to write. The only thing I have written in weeks has been in journals. I have thought about writing. I have stressed about writing. I have tried writing. Now I am going to start writing again. I am going to go back to where I started and write about things I want to write about, and not about what I think will sell. In the beginning this is what I did and guess what, it sold.

I am also going to be the kind of writer I want to be. I have stopped myself from doing this because other people have said that is what they want to do and I have been afraid to say it out loud because I don't want people to thing I am a copycat. Yeah, how stupid is that! Remember, I never said I was a grown-up!

So what kind of writer do I want to be. I want to be a travel writer. I want to write and illustrate children's books and I want to write young adult novels. I have this fantasy of myself as the next Judy Blume. This is the kind of writing I have always wanted to do and this is what I am going to do because not doing this is making me miserable.

I also want to say, that if I decide I want to write other things I will. I will write what makes me happy. Today that might be a ghost story and tomorrow a travel piece. There is a place out there for all of it and eventually I will find it.

posted by Kelly @ 3/03/2004 08:07:00 AM

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