I write scared

Is there an occupation, an employment, a reason for living that invokes such an anxious, desperate exploration for talent within us? Than writing, I mean.

I'm crying cause I'm scared. I'm crying cause I'm a writer and I'm scared. I'm crying because I'm a lazy writer and scared. I write scared.

And the Internet is my foe. My foe set me atop the temple roof and the entire spread of literature - the past masters, with their  and the current masters, blogging and tweeting - and says "This cannot be yours."

Inadequacy. Books a million. Websites a million. And where is my place in it?

I feel like a goldfish in a hurricane. Yes, I have a blog (where I rarely write). Yes, I have a Twitter account (where I rarely write). But, I'm nobody. A nobody writer and too lazy, I fear, to become somebody!

It's come to the point that I get depressed when I read a good story (usually in my favorite lit mags where I can't get published.)

Too many metaphors. The length of the title destroys flash fiction as a construct. Well, screw you! This isn't for us.

So what? What do I do? I'm a young writer, a sheltered human being, who's only recently fallen in love for real. Only recently living on my own. My stories are often caricatured. Oh, how I miss this! I want to workshop so badly!

"No one writes like you." Says my David.

He's on vacation this week and I'm a little weepy. On Monday he told me that God has been speaking with him.God told him that he hasn't been composing in earnest. "I was trying to impress others and be complicated."

Today he says "No one writes like you." Don't compare yourself. It's a trap. You write. You write.

He's right. Writing, or composing, is creative. This means that every creation and its means will be individualized. Other writers cannot be my measuring sticks. I can study their techniques and learn from them, but I cannot judge my talent by theirs.

Talent and skill are not the same. If I am unsatisfied with my skill, then I should stop whining and sharpen it. If I am unsatisfied with my talent, that's okay, because I need so much more than just that.

Rather, if I'm so afraid, I should stop putting a limit on my experience and write in earnest, paying attention to articles on craft, exercising, and writing what I've got.

My love taught me, "No one writes like you." And, he says. "And I forbid you from reading Hobart."

Anybody's Blog Could Kick my Blog's Butt

Hello everyone who has read my work in [A cappella Zoo, Toasted Cheese, Hawk & Handsaw, Pif Magazine, Cheek Teeth, or other].

If you're wondering why you've clicked on the link to my blog - because it obviously has been abandoned by its addict/roadhog mother - here I am again.

I'm sorry to disappoint you. Recently I've moved from my mom's house to my very first "room of my own" apartment! I am drunk on freedom and devoid of a computer with internet.

As I've been striving to acquire a 5th day on my work schedule for the cinema that employs me, and as I prefer to spend several hours with my fiance on Sundays and Wednesdays, and when I sit down to write I work on "The Good Samaritan Drives us to San Jose" and "Maps in the Back of Bibles" (coming soon!) my blogging days have been mercilessly slashed.

I did not die - though, admittedly, that would have been pretty cool. I am alive. I've just finished the Nobel Prize-winning masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude and began reading Snow Country by Yusanari Kawabata today. I'm receiving rejection letter after letter. Ergo sum.

More to come, stay tuned, yada yada. Good night.