The Let Down

After the huge response from the first Event Star Spotlight post, I felt absolutely elated.  Now that I've had some time to let it sink in, I feel just a tad terrified.  For every person born without a sense of fear, one is born with twice the amount, and I happen to be one of the latter. 

I like to think I've gotten better at controlling my fears over the years but some things just refuse to fade (i.e. my irrational fear of the dark).  I would assume that one of my most enduring fears is shared by most people; the fear of failure.  This has been the driving force behind the majority of my successes which can probably be proclaimed by many people much more successful than I.  However, the flip side is also true; that some of my biggest regrets are anchored from letting fear overcome me. 

Lost and found, all in one place

I fell in love with books and reading at a very young age.  While my peers were still immersed in picture books, I was moving on to short novels, devouring characters, towns, ideas, and adventures.  I was a shy, middle child with very few close friends and instead of trying to make some on the playground, I searched for them in the pages of my library. 

Looking back, this is what got me started writing.  I wanted to be the person who created these amazing worlds filled with better versions of myself.  It's probably also the reason I tend to read a lot of fluff stories, or chick-lit as it's become known.  I'm a sucker for a happy or at least an interesting ending, and love re-reading everything to pick up details I missed the first time around. 

The same an be said for my writing.  Over the past weeks I've been going back and reading old manuscripts.  From the countless unfinished stories to the embarrassingly juvenile book of my poetry an old boyfriend compiled as a gift, I can see where I went wrong or gave up.  I can see exactly where fear kicked into high gear and I put down my pen instead of seeing where I could take myself.

The beauty of forcing myself to write this blog every day is that I'm feeling those old stories come back to me and the itch to get them down on paper (or on screen as the case may be) is returning with full force.  I may not get anything published at the end of the day, but I think I'm finally ok with that.  Marcia Preston said it best; "And writing itself is a mixed blessing.  We, who are addicted, berate ourselves and feel guilty when we do not write, at the same time put it off and hunt for diversions.  Why?  Because the thing that makes us happiest is also tedious, frustrating and hard.  Writing makes us crazy; not writing, even crazier."

I'm off to drive myself crazy =)