Platitudes

"Confidence - fake it til you feel it."
"If you don't believe in yourself, no one else will." Which is usually followed by "It's not rocket science. Anybody can write a book."

It's amazing to me that we even continue to write. Through life dramas, illness, jobs, and day-to-day living, authors still carve out enough time in their day,whether it's pre-dawn or past the witching hour, to create little worlds in which the rest of us can escape.

I'm sure you could sense my growing despondence with the lack of progress in my own writing career. A lot of it was generated by unrelated issues that crept into all aspects of my life. While most people were encouraging about the writing, one friend was about two sentences away from sharing the idea of monkeys producing Shakespeare, aka the 10,000 monkey theorem.

That's when I took a good hard look at why I write; at the sense of accomplishment I feel when the story is told; how powerful it is to create worlds and manipulate characters; how satisfying it is to have total control over that one aspect of my life, whether it comes to my attitude, commitment, dedication or schedule.

What drives me back to the computer time and again is not the platitudes plastered all over office walls and self-help books, but rather the need to know where my imaginary friends are going and how they're going to get there.

Both my curiosity and imagination must be appeased.