I've always loved to write. Creating stories, fictional characters, spinning story lines and plots, and writing poems. Creative writing was an outlet for me that I always enjoyed and while I often had lapses in which I was focused on other things, I would usually come back to it in. Through many of my passing phases, my writing, artwork, and running were three things that held my interest. I had dreams of writing an award winning novel, would often start out on a creative writing venture, work away but get stuck somewhere along the way and either start a new writing project or push what I had already written aside as a project to be picked up again at some unknown later date should I ever choose to go back. There I would be left with lots of little unfinished written works, and I had almost resigned to the fact that a full book was outside of my capabilities. That I simply hadn't the patience or concentration to get down THAT many pages, and should stick to short fiction or poetry.
There's nothing wrong with that, in fact I love writing short stories, and poetry if I'm in the right mood, but there was the little part of me that still was remiss that I hadn't actually finished a creative writing piece that was long enough to constitute a novel length story. I do a lot of writing and blogging about fitness and exercise and I'm constantly saying how the mind is the biggest obstacle in our way to achieving our goals. The mind will tell your body you're too tired long before you are ever in danger of actually physically getting to a point where you have to quit. That's the case with long distance running, many people can't fathom the idea of running a certain amount of miles, but with proper training and perseverance you'd be surprised how far you can actually go.
So I thought I should apply this same logic to my writing. I had to stop gulping at the prospect of thousands or words, and instead just take it a day at a time; one sentence at a time. I set a daily goal for myself to write a certain amount of words each day, and found myself actually being able to exceed that amount more often than not. (My obsessive compulsive tendencies definitely started to come out, just as they do with my running!) Eventually I was becoming excited by the prospect that I would actually finish this written novel. As I continued to get the plot and story down onto the page I was growing more excited as I could see the end in sight.
I would get anxious and impatient, simply wanting to get it DONE, but I knew that I wouldn't be happy with the end result if I just rushed it. I did finally finish the project I set out to do. I have the rough draft of my first officially finished novel, and while it is still on the shorter side as far as books go, I do feel proud I finished it. I proved to myself that I could do it; although I still have the mundane task of editing and reworking to do and I by no means and DONE done. And although I may be a freelance writer and have article writing under my belt, I don't' have an agent and getting one's first book published is not an easy task by any stretch!
However, I finished something I had always wanted to do; had set out upon and never fully achieved. I keep that in mind whenever I get frustrated with my own freelance writing, blogging, and articles in that I may not be where I want to be or earning as much as I would hope from my freelance writing career. I am still new to the whole world of freelance writing, but am learning and doing my best to improve upon my skills as best I can. Learning from other and reading tips and advice, I still keep plugging away at my goals because I know that writing makes me happy and that freelance writing as a career is something I want and worth working for!
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