I can effing do this too!

Going through my links today, hoping to be inspired by something, my usual run of checking each of my blog links somehow seeming unsatisfying (not all of them, mind you, just some of them). Today it is my "Writing" folder of links to various webpages I have bookmarked as interesting, at some point. As I look at them I wonder if I'll ever read them again, my attention span diminshed to the point that posting a blog or responding to an email immediately after reading one seems like too much time and effort.

Came across some links to other writers, one of whom I met at an Elizabeth Hay reading back last year sometime, I can't even remember when. I attended that reading myself, probably one of the very few times I've done something like that myself up here. I seem to be afraid to do it, even though I know that it's easier to attend something alone in a city like Ottawa instead of Charlottetown, yet I used to go to readings by myself all the time at home because I knew a lot of the people who were going to be there, and it didn't seem so weird.

I'm digressing again - the woman and I got to talking and she told me she was a writer and gave me her card and I looked up her info and it turns out she's a Christian writer and has one book published.

It got me to thinking - I'm just as capable of writing and getting published as any of these people. The difference between them and me? I don't allow myself enough time to work on it. Why? I'm afraid of not being good enough, of not writing anything interesting, of wasting my time doing something mediocre. Defeated before I even start.

I have been reading a book I stumbled across from mintyfresh's blog that has been really inspiring, if only I could find the courage to put it to practice. It is called If You Want to Write by Barbara Ueland. It was written in the 1930s, but the advice and encouragement is just as timely as if it were written today. I find it so difficult to manage to write down my thoughts even for this blog some days. Is it the February blahs? I'm not sure. It's the no money, no "real" job, I miss my family, I wish I were successful, I wish I had a dog blues.