Showing Up

This has not been the best weeks I've ever had. The euphoria of being free to pursue my creative and caring impulses has died down to be replaced with: Oh My Gods - what was I thinking? Closely followed by: I Can't Do This; and the ever-helpful: I Am Not Worthy of my Dreams. The job stacking shelves at Tesco when I'm 80, because I don't have a pension, has been calling me and 2, 3 and 4 o'clock in the morning. I won't lie, I think I cried my way through half a box of tissues yesterday.

I picked up the Big Girl Pants and put them away. I gave myself permission to be scared, fearful, doubtful and terrified. I sat with them and then when the time came, I went out and got good nails and fabulous eyebrows. Because if I'm going to fall apart, then at least let me have two bloody eyebrows!

Today, hasn't happened very quickly. It's taken me all morning to do my workout, get clean and dressed. I've cleaned my hearth, hauled my wood and coal and built my fire. In the spirit of great procrastination, I made myself a massive lunch and as I ate I watched this:



Elizabeth Gilbert is my latest guru-crush. There's a lot about her that I adore: her humour, her courage and she talks sense to me. But in this TED talk she really nails it down, why I've been struggling so hard and for so many years about my creativity.

It has now been 7 years since I graduated with my BA in Creative Writing. I've had my hands full in this time. It has to be said that since then, my life has not been all shitz and gigglez as the kidz do say. However, what hasn't helped is my self-sabotage. I have been afraid of committing myself to my creative process. I hid behind an office job, my wish to economically sustainable and basically pretended that my creative process and longing didn't matter. I tried being "sensible". 

All that is changing. Today, I am still sharing my space with my doubts, but I've peeled them off me and told them to go sit in the corner and to be quiet.

I am showing up. 

It's like this Ladies and Gentlemen, I want to write genre fiction. I want to write paranormal romances with elves, wizards, vampires, witches and werewolves. I want to write about kick-ass women and the adoring men with whom they live happily ever after. I want to write the books people read to unwind after their days working, the kind of books that get dropped in the bath, taken on holiday, loaned to friends and never returned.

There you go. That's what I want and I am owning that now. My goal is to write for Harlequin Nocturne and then to have my own series published independently. 

I'm letting go the idea of writing "proper" fiction. I'm always going to go to the Voewood Literary Festival as a gawping attendee. I'm letting go the idea that people will have heard of me and that they'll have read my work and liked what they read. It's a hard one to release, but I'm going to have to set it free because it isn't my dream and it's not who I am. I may yet indulge my literary fantasy, as I don't really have any pensionable options, I may yet write that Pulitzer prizewinner when I'm 80. In the meantime, I will be having fun.