Sunday, June 24, 2007

Hear My Song

I would be a liar to say that I didn't wonder, from time to time, just where the hell this whole thing is going. I'll hear from friends that are having plays produced, or see a kid that I went to school with having a pretty big part in a legitimate movie and I wonder just what on earth I'm doing. There are levels of completion, steps to success, and with nothing quite finished and no completed project on the horizon, I wonder if I'm actually accomplishing anything.

It's gorgeous outside, and the sun's spilling into my bedroom. The breeze is gentle and smells clean. It feels like the kind of day in which success can be relished, but for me, I wonder if I will ever make it to that point.

It's a fear - a fear of failure, a fear of mediocrity. A fear of being anything but significant.

And yet, just when it feels like it should be crippling, when I can't quite figure out where it should go, I hear a tiny voice in my heart that gently urges me to keep going. Keep writing. Three pages here, five pages there. Laughter, tears, joy, triumph. All the roads are different - length, composition, the obstacles thereon. On days like this, my mind mingles with memories that I associate with my earliest passions of writing. My old muses make my heart heavy, and I wonder if the answer to the future lies somewhere in my past.

My heart, however, will have none of this. Just a few more pages. Help your characters succeed. Make their passions yours. Breathe life into them. Take your passion and compassion, and empathy, and fears and roll them into words that matter...

...even if only to you.

I know it's tough right now, but this too shall pass. Soon this will all be a punchline to a very, very, funny joke.

Just keep writing, just keep writing, just keep writing, writing, writing...

"Just lie in my arms and I'll tell you the things that you know but forget. The lies no one ever could sell you...I know that it's hard, but don't give up yet."