"What's Your Back Up Plan?"

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

As a child, when my deep infatuation of storytelling was first born, I was amazed at how stories could “come to me.” It felt like a premonition, a huge serge of energy I had never felt before. This energy was immediately followed with a decision. A conscious choice to pick up a pen, and scribble on a page what was floating freely in my young, impressionable mind. I remember feeling invincible, as though I could do something no one else could. This was a time of experimentation, a time of play, and ultimately a time of creative development in my writing.

This changed when my desire to write grew into my choice of occupation. Those early sparks of constant ideas faded. The energy turned to deflation, and self-loathing. A swirl of questions continually penetrated my thoughts. “Why can’t I write?” This first question caused me to look at all the environmental factors. The answer was always, “Oh, I don’t have the right space to sit down and work,” or “I’m not as passionate about this project than I was with others.” These are merely cop-outs. It took me four years of higher-level education to finally tell myself the truth. It was never that I couldn’t write, it was only that I chose not to. This immensely terrifying realization made the questions more invasive. “If you don’t want to write, why do you call yourself a writer?” This one hit deep into my core, like the vibrations of a metronome. The answer was lack luster to say the least. “I write because it’s what I know.”

The big surprise is that I do not have a set writing practice. I do not wish to trick you all into thinking that I do certain things everyday in order to produce words on a page, because that would be a lie. I struggle. I sit in front of a screen, waiting for something to happen, begging the words to find me. They don’t. I have to find them, and sometimes, they don’t make it easy. Sure, there are techniques used to combat the blank page, and I’ve tried them. I need to allow myself to struggle through the discomfort of not having any ideas, before I am rewarded with one. I tread water in a dangerous current, terrified of failure, until I remember I know how to swim, and eventually make it to shore.

I never had a "backup" plan. When I sat my parents down at sixteen and told them I wanted to go to university for creative writing so I could learn to write scripts that I dreamed to work in film eventually, they just said, "Okay, hunny." They didn't go into a long drawn out diatribe about how writing won't get me paid, and that the film industry wasn't a viable, secure career choice. Instead, they nurtured my dreams and encouraged the skills I was developing. They both told me that if I was going to pursue this dream, it would be hard, but worth it if I was doing something I loved.

I write, because I enjoy the rush of creating something from nothing. I enjoy defeating the blank page. Whether I’ve developed a strong character, a concrete world, or a beautiful image, my projects reflect the journey I take in order to complete them.