Some days you’re on top of the world but every once in awhile you end up taking a look in the mirror and asking yourself the same questions many others have asked before you. What am I doing with myself? Recently I took a break from writing in my two blogs in hopes I would be able to focus more on my own writing. What followed was a complete lack of focus and the result is I haven’t written anything in over two weeks. I am always thinking about my writing, always adding more to the varied characters and lore of the world I am building, but the problem I am finding is a complete fear of finishing the task. I’ve been there once before, and nothing came of it. What’s that? You’ve never heard of my first creative endeavour? Well, it couldn’t hurt.

Much like many budding and aspiring writers, I have been writing for a very long time. I’ve accomplished many a decent short story and once upon a wonderful time I had actually written a story I wanted to submit for publication. I haven’t told many people of the content or even of the event itself, but it consumed me. I went from being a child who loved the outdoors to one who sat inside writing, drawing and gaming. The story was aimed at tweens (as that was the age I was at while writing) and was about a boy who was bullied into many situations until he eventually had no friends. The boy is then recruited by a secret society who are called Immortals. The twist was that everyone in the world could live forever if unhindered, but it was the Immortals’ job to maintain a low population count. This meant they had to function outside of society and ensure people died “randomly”.

The whole concept of living forever intrigued me, what things would people see? What could they learn? Also at the time, I had turned on my so called friends and stopped stealing for them. I very much wanted to leave my life behind and start new, as a different person. I knew I had changed dramatically, yet those around me wouldn’t change. In fact they still haven’t. The idea for the story was personal to me as I wanted to be the character I had created. One day he was alone and the next, welcomed into a secret society. I hoped if I couldn’t be him, at least I would get rich off this story.

Enter the editor. Imagine writing just over three hundred pages and submitting it before heading off for year seven. I worked as hard as I could to earn extra money to send the story in. The problem was, well… I was young. My writing was only as good as I had been taught up to this point and I can imagine the editor on the receiving end. I chose a small, virtually unknown publisher as my target. I figured my chances would be better there. Well, surprisingly me and the editor actually wrote back and forth a few times as the novel went back and forth. One of the major issues with it was I had written it all by hand and in ink. It was a tragedy to see it come back with so many replacements and edits. I added descriptions, took some out, changed so much; Eventually it wasn’t mine any more. Finally, I was getting somewhere when fate took a turn for the worse.

I came home one day to find that the hallway leading to my room was actually a shallow river. I can remember the breath being stolen from me as I marched down the hall and peered under my bed. I suppose I should explain a few things here. First thing’s first, my room was six feet wide by roughly eight feet long. With a closet taking up roughly a foot and a half worth of corner space, my room was a tight fit with a bed, a television and a wardrobe. The storage space I had also included beneath my bed, which is where I haphazardly stored my writing. Another thing worth mentioning is that my room shared a wall with the washroom and on that wall in my room was the entrance to the hot water heater. Now we’re back to me kneeling beneath the bed, in roughly an inch of water. I see it, and I realize that at that moment, that story will never be published.

I pull it out and try to find a single page in the mass of soggy paper. The ink I used with trust has betrayed me and run through to the many pages below them. A blue, soggy cube of despair. That is the final memory I have of the first story I ever tried to get published. I didn’t cry for it, no. But I got rid of the evidence and other things beneath my bed before letting my parents know the hot water tank had flooded my room. It was fixed promptly enough and I later asked for a typewriter for my birthday. For anyone out there who hasn’t written on a typewriter, I envy you. For anyone who has written things worthwhile on a typewriter… you have my utmost respect. It wouldn’t be long after that when I would ask for my first computer.

Ever since then I’ve had a mild fear of submitting for publication. In year twelve I managed to get a poem published that was written from a photo I was given. I attempted to start a business, which I panicked and pulled away from. I stressed myself out so much for university I developed some form of insomnia and ended up dropping out of Computer Science. I have yet to finish a story from beginning to end despite writing consistently from a young age. In a sense I feel as though I am beginning to fear success more than failure. Many a person has told me this is entirely a lack of confidence. I would actually disagree with them, I am quite confident.

I was making extremely good progress with my story planning and the concept was coming together nicely. Also, my idea to transform any new ideas into concepts and ideas for the current story was both rewarding and enriching. So what went wrong? I stopped writing one night as I was getting tired. Sounds like a simple enough thing, but when I woke up, the mood was gone. I could have kept writing, but I really wasn’t feeling it. Even today, I chose to write this blog post over writing a thousand more words toward my story. Also, working nights has turned me sloth-like in many ways. I feel myself imagining new story ideas but not even bothering to write them down. I frequently figure out new scenes for the story I am working on but have no idea how to incorporate them into the story as a whole. The scene literally sets itself as the score ramps up with the intense action. The war for hope begins and…

I simply long for sleep. That is all.