Aspiring Writer Dilemmas

Hey there,

I’m not a writer. Well, what I mean is that I love to write but I’m by no means a professional at it. But I have always hoped and dream that one day I could turn my passion for writing into a career. So today, using a workbook to kick-start novel writing, I planned my novel.

I planned everything from the characters to their specific profiles – including what drives them – to how they will relate to one another in the novel. I planned my prologue and I wrote out a whole plot point layout for the struggles my protagonist will face (which basically gave me a timeline of how my novel will play out). I wrote down all the ideas for the issues in this world, the setting, the environment within this setting, the years, dates,  laws, etc. And I finished all that planning and thought, “Yeah, this could be a pretty cool YA novel…”

Then I thought about books like Harry Potter and I thought about books like Lord of the Rings or Chronicles of Narnia and I thought to myself, is the world I just made up truly the world I want to invest my time into? It could be cool, it could become a trilogy, it could develop into something important, but it doesn’t evoke any of the same feelings that those novels I just mentioned evoke in readers.

But then I got to thinking, is that what writers do? Compare themselves to one another without giving their own ideas a chance, first? Beat themselves up before they’ve even fully created something? Criticize something they haven’t even really started?

Reading and writing has always been my escape. I don’t want to turn it into an opportunity to criticize myself or judge myself or put myself down. I will just write, and if something comes from it, good, if nothing comes from it, I’ll keep writing.

xo
C