Sheepish Writer

    When I say I'm majoring in English, 90% of people ask me, "Oh, so you want to teach?" And I always feel sheepish when I tell people, "No, I want to be a writer."

     Maybe I feel sheepish because I write more about writing than anything. Or maybe because I halfway don't believe my ultimate dream will ever come true, because it would be too good to be true. Living above my bakery-bookstore in a quiet English town or a noisy American city, scribbling poems in a dog-eared notebook at a coffeeshop, recording music in a studio, owning a tabby cat, being indebted to my editor, posting audio chapters of Wynna on my website, and sending friends and acquaintances autographed copies of my book would be too good to be true.

      Maybe this isn't a feeling of sheepishness but of selfishness.

     How do I spread hope with poems about my emotions and stir hearts with stories about dragons and princesses? And do hope and heart-stirring mean as much to me as all the rest?

Jack of All Trades, Master of One

     I'm a kind of a Jack of all Trades, Master of One. I play piano, I sing, I draw, I sew, I cook, I shoot, I play tennis. I speak one language fluently and three not so well. I've dreamed of acting, of teaching, of being a federal agent. And yet, the only thing I'm good enough at to make a career out of is writing.
     But sometimes I wonder, do I really want to be an author? Because that means writing, and a lot of times I want to do anything but write. Often I just can't seem to get a single sentence onto the page, much less  beautiful prose. It's like trying to squeeze a pea-sized drop out of an empty sample tube of moisturizer.

    Last year in August I wrote a post about a quote by Gloria Steinem. "I do not like to write; I like to have written." I ran across a nearly identical quote in The Write Practice, and it's by Dorothy Parker (20th century American writer). "I hate writing; I love having written." It's comforting to know I'm not alone and that feeling love and hate for writing doesn't mean I shouldn't become an author. Especially because I have no idea what I could do besides write...

     Here is the post where I found the quote: What is the Most Satisfying Part of Writing?

Do you ever hate what you love to do?