Musings - Armchair Aspirations...

Will I ever just be more than an armchair player at writing?

Sigh… I remember when it started, you know, the writing bug. I must have been about thirteen and I saw White fang for the first time. You know the film… Gold Rush? Ethan Hawke? Wolf? Shaggy hair on both? And I remember sitting there thinking but what happens next? (This was before the shadow that was White Fang 2). So I set to, on the ribbon typewriter that my parents had bought me a couple of Christmases previous, and wrote me a sequel. It was awful and centred mostly on the lead finding a lovely young British girlfriend up there in the wilds of Klondike but I was hooked.

I suddenly had the story telling bug and soon every television episode, film, book or power ballad became the introduction to what I would begin tapping out with typewriter and Tippex in the confines of my Yorkshire bedroom. I had pages and pages of the stuff and fingers so sore that I was soon forced to resort to pencils and notepads (all of which I still have, by the way).

Then one day I took a leap and started a project of my own and I discovered that I was quite capable of inventing a world rather than expanding a piece of somebody else’s. This fish had found a new hook with a bait worth hanging in there for… I was in love with writing. It didn’t really matter what I wrote, I was addicted to the buzz I got from writing, from even just thinking about writing. I have seventeen years of those note books and a great deal more electronically. But with great buzz and an ever changing barrage of ideas comes great distraction and an abundant lack of focus…

Which is where I get to answer my opening question.

Do I deserve to be more? I worry that I should never be more than that thirteen year old sat upstairs chewing on the end of her HB pencil. I am lazy, I never finish anything, I have esteem issues, little time and I (clearly) make excuses for not pulling my finger out in the interim between thirteen and thirty and getting on with it.

If it makes any difference I know what I want ; which is either a step in the right direction or merely a taunt that I haven’t achieved it yet. I want to be THAT person who people search to read but I know unless I give them something to seek I will never hit upon anybodies radar.

I need help. I need focus.
But I know that I need to find these myself.

And I will… even if it means starting from the comfort of my armchair.