Burning Desire/The Best Right Now

My goodness! It's been soooo long since I posted here.

Let's see what's been happening. I've been typing in handwritten pages from Resolve to Love, book number 3. I'd been adding pages since June, but only after watching an "Intimate Portrait" for Terry McMillan did I "feel" like typing them up. Actually I didn't "feel" like it, I was more or less propelled by burning desire to be as successful as Terry--one day!!

The other day one of the online writing groups I belong to posted a question asking each of us to toot our horns regarding any accomplishments. I said I'd self-published my first book, was working on my third and trying to sell my second. But what I am most proud of is something intangible, it's my burning desire to write, to get better, to publish. It's my greatest asset as a writer I believe.

I'm **always** writing, even if it may not look like it. I'll be talking to my husband and he'll tell me something. And I'll wonder...hmmm. Would this make a good story? When I go into work on the train, I'm either writing in my journal or reading (which is essential to my writing life). While at work during breaks I jot down notes. Then when I get home while settling the children, getting dinner, reading outloud from Dr. Seus books (Green Eggs and Ham, One Fish Two Fish, the ABC Book etc) etc I'm also taking frequent breaks to check my emails. Post to my groups and this week I'm also typing.

However, I rarely "compose" when I'm being pulled in 1000 directions in the evening. For about two months in June and July and some of August I believe, I wrote a page a day by hand on the way to work and during breaks. I'm taking a little "break" right now. I haven't written anything new (aside from my daily journal) since 8/16. That's the last time I worked on my latest project, a short speech called "The Faith of a Writer." Before that I drafted a speech called "Finding my Voice."

I'm terrible at ad libbing so I'm hoping the antidote to stage fright and fear of my mind going blank when I get in front of an audience, is to write down exactly what I want to say. This serves a double purpose because I can present the speeches to a group, then have it published later either on my website or with some one else. Eventually I'll get better at presenting my work to audiences and I won't need this safety net anymore, but until then I'll keep writing them.

Oh, speaking of getting better I was inspired by a few sections I read in a book called Plot by Ansen Dibell. I loved this line: "The story doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be the very best story you can write now. That's all you have a right to expect of it, or of yourself..."

If someone only said this to me 8 years ago when I was writing what I thought were a very bad, amateurish set of short stories called Revolutionary Love! I ended up abandoning these stories after all of that love and work and creativity. They certainly weren't perfect, but they were the best I could do at the time. I should have sent them out to SOMEBODY, SOMEWHERE and kept sending them out--as Dibell goes on to say:

"...If it's a true story, true to people and their experience, and if it's constructed with at least a moderate narrative craft, it will be published, sooner or later...."

I didn't get confident enough to come out with a book, until I'd been writing and getting published for years (websites, newspapers etc), after taking several classes, hiring an editor etc. Then I signed up with iUniverse to self publish. And only after that did I finally have the nerve to submit my second manuscript to a publishing house. No, that's not true, a year ago I did submit to an agent, but I felt truly like it was a shot in the dark. With the publisher, at this stage of the game, I'm hopeful.

Dibell's words are truly a comfort. I'm going to keep writing and studying the craft and as he said my stories will be published sooner or later. And I thank God every day for the burning desire that keeps me productive in the meantime.