Hobby

Writing is a hobby, not a career. Yes, you can get payed for a hobby. Yes, some people manage to make decent careers off of them. But you have to be good to do that. You have to have the skill set right out the door to be a writer. You have to be patient. You have to be determined and able to finish. You have to be strong willed and able to swallow rejection to be a writer.

I am not a writer. 
 

It kills me to think that, even moreso to type it. But the truth is unavoidable. You have to have the skill before practicing to make it in the bloody, competitive, tooth and claw writing world. You need to be some sort of prodigy before you even try. You already are at a disadvantage if you need to practice to get good. You're already behind. In the creative community, every disadvantage is killer. There are however many more gladiators, if you will, above you in the chain with that many fewer opponents to cut through than you do. It's deadly, entering the world of creatives. Just putting your foot in, a story story written on the side, is dangerous. Trying to make a career out of it? That's like leaping right into the lion's den--no, right into the mouth of the lion.  

And sure, a an average writer from the start I am, I think, probably ahead of some people. But how many others are above average, or even above that? Already ahead of me with the skills and determination to get better. I tell myself I'll get better; I tell myself I'll put in more effort; I tell myself I'll take writing more seriously. But it never lasts. How could it with so many other things? Things that take me away from it while I think, "why?" Because I'm not a writer, that's why. 

It begs the question, then, what am I? That, my friends, is what I intend to find out. 

Ideas

I'm full of ideas for blog posts, but it always takes an undue amount of effort to sort out my loose thoughts and structure them into sensible words. It's almost as though my ideas are a waterfall and I stand at the bottom with a plastic cup trying to catch all of them. For some reason they always end up spilling over or not filling the the cup enough. It's difficult to get the right amount of an idea. I find myself thinking for days how great one of my ideas are, and then when I try and capture that idea into words it doesn't actually match up. 

That stands for every idea; not just blog posts. Be that in writing or life in general. I imagine a world whose magic is fueled by the hearts of deceased dragons; then when I write it I suffer through pages of cliches until I abandon the idea. I think--for once--to go for the girl; and then am left to wander when she chooses someone else anyways. I come up with an entire world on the brink of full scale war; and suddenly I am lost as to where the plot should go. I think I can make a career from a hobby; and am confronted with fears so great that I'm unsure I could accomplish it.

If you can't tell, I have a lot of ideas. And most of them fall through in the end. It's why I'm not published yet, or even have anything finished writing-wise. And life-wise that's why I'm such a mess. I have this insane lack of ability to finish. Perhaps, though, overcoming that will be the reason I continue doing what I do. Perhaps the feeling of "I finished this" will push me onward to greater tasks than before.

A Proposal on Reading

For writers of all sorts, the best piece of advice anyone can give is to read. Read, read, and read some more. Because if you don't read, how do you know what you like? Another great bit of advice you often hear as a writer is to write what you would want to read. And if you don't read? The obvious conclusion: you don't write.

A big part of reading, especially as a writer, is reading like a writer. When you read, you don't just dive into the story and submerge yourself into the characters and put yourself in the setting, though that's still important. No, as a writer, you've got to analyze. Analyze the style the author uses in certain situations, their overall voice, how they meld different styles together. Analyze how they establish the setting, how they keep you grounded in the reality they're creating, how they drive home the emotion of the locations. Analyze the characters themselves, how the author brings them to life, how they react to each other, how they act under duress, how they talk. You have to analyze how the author uses all of this to their advantage in the actual plot of the story, how they string everything together, where the beginning and end are, the pacing between each major event, the impact the climax and resolution really have upon the story. All of these things are majorly important as the writer reads anything.

The real problem begins, then, in deciding what stories to read? Many many people will say to read anything and everything you can get your hands on--which is true to an extent. However, I would like to argue that there are enough books published that if that you can easily get your hands in anything you want. The real issue at hand is choosing which books are more worth reading than others.