365 Days of Writing Challenge

This challenge is simple and personal. I am challenging myself to write something, anything, every day for a year. They say that if you do something every day for a week it is much easier to continue doing it. We will see how this experiment goes.

My goal is a whole year, three hundred and sixty-five days, of writing. I always have a ton of ideas floating around in my head, but it seems that I never end up putting them down anywhere. I also seem to always get interrupted by things going on in life. My new goal in dealing with this is I'm going to blog about it. So, not only are you going to get works of literature and writings about my ideas you will also end up getting writings about my everyday life.

My Writer's Block

Most of us at one point or another have heard about writer's block. The term is used for writers who can't seem to find anything to write about. We just sit there staring at a blank piece of paper for hours stuck and unable to go any further. I was stuck for years with this condition. The ideas were there until I was looking at the paper and then nothing ever happened. I have finally figured out what caused this, fear.

For all artists there is a part of us that wants to do something that is groundbreaking. We want to be the next big name and have everyone singing our praises, but at the same time this is terrifying. The what if's start to build up in our minds. What if I really don't know how to write, but don't know it? What if this is really not what I was meant to do? What if no one likes my ideas? What if I can never finish this story? When we allow these what if's to pile up on us we run into writer's block. Our brain is churning so much trying to come up with "THE" story that we can't write any story.

I am a Writer

A couple months ago I lost my full time job. It was wearing me down more and more every day so it wasn't something that I mourned the loss of to begin with. I was thinking that this was a wonderful new start. That I could finally do something better with my life that didn't suck every ounce of energy out of me.

When I started out I was thinking that I have no idea what I wanted to do. It's the never ending conundrum, when faced with infinite possibilities how do I know that I've found the right one? I was stuck. So, being the avid reader that I am, I started reading. I went to the ones that I remember being told about when I was a kid. I looked for the constant favorite, "What Color is Your Parachute?" What I found was lists and lists of attributes that I wasn't sure if I had or not. Am I ambitious, coherent, organized, etc? I just didn't know. I found myself getting depressed about this whole thing. I was hoping that something would tell me what I'm good at. I mean after all the centuries of people working and the multitude of personality measures and things out there I figured that there would be a test somewhere that would tell me what I should be doing with my life.