Dont quit.

To think there was a time when I fancied myself a pretty good writer. I was writing essays for fun in elementary school. I wrote raps, a full album worth in middle school. I had full songs in elementary school. I even tried to send a demo tape to “NWA”.  And who knows what would have happened if I actually put stamps on the envelope that I stuffed a cassette tape into and sent it to the address on the cover of their album?

 Later, I gained “employment” with multiple opinion websites, pay was of course optional…and pretty much 100% of the time they opted out.  This was back when I was big into the internet Pro Wrestling scene. So in a sense, I was an officially published writer.

I even had a poetry website. I of course wasn’t the first poetry website, but I fully believe I had the first online poetry community. It was called the “Internet Poetry Society” or “IPS” and I treated it kind of like a Pro Wrestling type of community. I can’t really remember the dates and no records of it exist, even on the “Wayback” machine. There were poetry “matches” of sorts, free style, Haiku boards, etc. It was ambitious, and in a wild digress, it was how my family found out my girlfriend was pregnant. (lol)

I had a very popular Fantasy Wrestling website. At its peak I had 10,000 members. People treated me like I was someone important and I even reluctantly signed two autographs. Even made a little actual money off my hobby with eager wrestling website owners paying me money to advertise on my website. It was a fun run. And my family knew NOTHING about this website. (lol)

I wrote articles, columns, tutorials, I was literally blogging before that word existed, you name it. My good friend, Eric at the time called it “comprehensive”. That word was the ultimate compliment to me at the time because I thought it severely lacked material.

Fact is, I didn’t care what other people were writing. I wrote because I enjoyed it. I did read a lot, but I wasn’t like an avid reader. I read most of the cliché classics and all (Twain, Salinger, London, Verne), but I didn’t immerse myself in novels.

But one day, I just stopped writing on a regular basis. I started caring what others were writing… and it made me feel inadequate. You see, I can write but my writing was only better than my environment. I was only better than the people around me. When I compared it to writing from outside my own circle, it felt bush-league at best, drivel at worst.

In other words, I quit because others were better.

So I gave up on something I was genuinely passionate about. And that was pretty much it. It never truly went back to the way it was. Even as I write this I’m struggling to continue and just want to save it for later, which translates into the cutting room floor. Mind is drifting off into space. Keep thinking about bills and other issues. Feeling a need to cast if off as “writers block” and box it up in the attic.

But there’s the thing. There is no such thing as “writers block”.

I stumbled across some audio books by a guy named Seth Godin. He’ a renown marketing guru if you aren’t familiar with the name. He explained that writers block is a myth. It is a convenient way to be lazy. It’s a made-up ailment that disguises the real problem; fear. The fear of putting out something that might make you uncomfortable due to the judgement of others. You simply don’t want people to think you suck. You don’t want to make a mistake that might expose you as a rank amateur instead of the consummate expert in your field that you put in your own head. And ironically I got stuck on a word that I was trying to use that sounded fancy… swandisan… swatisan…suadisan… I can’t even remember how it’s spelled ang google isn’t helping lol. It roughly means “self titled”.  Just keeping it a buck, I don’t have a sophisticated vocabulary and sometimes I pretend I do.

To make this as elementary as possible, writers write. You are not always going to sound the smartest, or write the deepest, or be the most insightful and sometimes your writing won’t even be helpful to anyone, but you keep writing because you love to write. Some writers have dozens of books, and only a single novel made any waves.

You just write. Sure, there will be detractors and those who only serve to insult and attack, (aka haters). Sometimes they maybe have a point. Most times they are simply projecting their own misery on to you.

This is simply just something that was on my mind. A “what if” if you please. What if I didn’t allow myself to get discouraged. What if I ended up on a major publication if I never gave up?

What if I stopped using quotation marks to show emphasis?

What if… it’s not too late for me too?