Taking The Wheel: A Journey Into a Writing Career

Coming from a background in visual arts, stewing in the idea of becoming a full-time writer should not have freaked me out.

But it did.

No.

It does.

Hell ya, I am scared. Trying to soak in all the advice and sorting through the good, the bad, and the ugly has put me in a year-long panic mode.

I have to admit that I haven’t tried very hard to make something work because of fear. I did get lucky last year landing a couple of the top-tier bonuses on this platform, but aside from that, my writing adventure has entailed me writing thousands of words, deleting it all, and repeating the process a few times.

And then there are the two fiction novels that I spent endless hours on thinking I was really on to something but came to the realization I had no idea what I was doing.

I get so pumped up, and then I hit a wall. I won’t call it writer's block because I can always write. I don’t seem to deal with that. It might be a bunch of gibberish, but the act of writing has not been an issue so far. It is fear of failure, fear of humiliating myself, and the worst — fear of my work not being read at all.

That has led me to convince myself that maybe writing isn’t a good career choice for me after all. I mean, you can’t make money from writing that you never put in front of anyone.

Admittedly, I have been in writing school for the past year. I put myself in about twenty-thousand dollars worth of debt so far and have only made back nearly two thousand of that. I know that is more than some people, but in my head, writing as much as I do, I should be jamming out work by now.

I had to come up with a solution or accept defeat. I hate losing; it isn’t my idea of fun. Therefore, I am going to challenge myself. I need the motivation to write every day, so I decided to create The Adventures Of Writing.

My goal is to spend the next 365 days writing something every day on this publication. If all goes well, by mid-February of 2023, I will have a solid start in my career, almost finished with an MFA in creative writing, and over the fear of people thinking I am a joke.

I will share helpful resources, journal about what I am working on for personal projects and school, and maybe add some book reviews now and again. The ultimate goal is to get to the point of sharing both short stories and poetry.

Once I start getting some traction, I hope to invite others to join me. I want to set the tone before jumping in with more than my own feet. But, I plan to make this a collective place for creative writers to vent and share their stories.

It would be awesome if doing this will help someone else along the way, too!

I am sharing this with the world to prove that I am courageous despite fear and hold myself accountable.

Just getting started, it is hard to imagine people will be reading my work. But I am going to hold on to my faith that hard work does indeed pay off.

If you have read this far, I am grateful for you. If you want to come for this ride with me, please feel free to subscribe and/or follow me on this platform!