Telling the Story

When I was a little girl I wanted to be a mommy. Back in my day, that's what all little girls wanted to be because women didn't have careers or jobs. When I was a little older I went through a whole slew of career choices, but not a single one of them was writer or author. It wasn't because I lacked talent or ambition. It just seemed so far out of reach that it wasn't an attainable goal and my life was pretty much about attainable goals.

So I wrote for myself. I wrote to satisfy some inner urge and need. And that's what I still do. Only now--miracle of miracles--I get paid to write. Mostly I write because I have a headful of stories and I'm running out of room up there. Without the safety valve of writing, I suppose my head would just explode. Not a pretty picture.

I won't lie and say that there aren't bad days. There are the days when my brain just bounces around like a ping pong ball on speed. On those days I don't have a prayer of accomplishing anything even remotely writerly so I find something else to do. There are other days when perhaps I received a bad review when I feel doooooown in the dumps. Strangely enough I don't get discouraged. I just get...irritated at the reviewers lack of perception. But writing while dealing with irritation is not a happy mix. So I save those days up to write scenes where I need to convey irritability and annoyance.

There are other times that discouragement drags me down. Perhaps I've received a less than princessly royalty statement. What's wrong with those people? Don't they know I'm a fabulous writer? That I'm worth every penny they could spend on one of my books? Yeah, there are always those day.

That is when I go track down a fellow writer or two or three and we have a general bellyachin' fest to get past that. You see, writing is a solitary occupation. And because it is, the interaction with other people must by necessity be deliberate. There is nothing accidental about e-mailing a fellow writer for input or to ask them how the weather is or what they're working on. After a while, the writer must connect with other like-minded humans. That contact is ultimately what keeps us sane. Our spouses, SOs, kids, friends--unless they, too, are writers--will not understand the frustration of a lost story thread or a ping ponging brain. Only another writer will understand that. Hence the e-mail...

Would I want to do something else at this point in my life?

No. Not in a million years.

Anny
www.annycook.com