When I first dipped a toe into the social media pool, I chose what I thought was a clever moniker for my brand: 'trying2write'. Now of course at that time, I had no idea what a brand was. I was more focused on how clever I seemed by wordsmithing that puppy like a boss.
Most of my writer friends were beginners like me. Finding the time to write was something we constantly fretted over. I was pretty proud of myself for grabbing that handle first. In hindsight, it now appears to be a self-fulfilling defeatist prophecy. As Master Yoda says:
However, being a Glass Half Full kinda gal, I don't view trying as failure. To me, trying is doing. Lack of trying is failure.
I suspect that for many of us, 'trying' is a euphemism for 'thinking about [fill in your unfulfilled goal here - in my case, writing] while procrastinating and doing just about anything else including scrubbing the bathroom grout with baking soda and a toothpick to avoid actually [writing]'. So the ugly truth is this: I am not further along in my writing process because I am decidedly NOT trying.
For someone (me) who professes to enjoy all aspects of writing - the solitude, the goal-setting, planning, plotting, brainstorming, organizing, publishing, marketing, networking, promoting, payday, and oh yes, THE ACTUAL WRITING - I certainly don't set aside much time for this thing I supposedly prize so highly. And I don't even have the formidable obstacles many aspiring writers have to overcome. I don't work a full time job. I don't have young kids to carpool. So what's the issue? The issue is the Not Doing. If I put as much time into my actual unfinished manuscripts (7 at last count) that I do into all the other stuff I just listed, they would be finished by now.
I've since changed most of my social media accounts from the clever to the practical - most of them are now some version of my name. Pro tip: at around the same time I did this, I deleted the word 'aspiring' from all of my author profiles.
So as much as I would love to continue blogging and surfing and tweeting, I need to unplug and devote the precious next two hours I have available today to working on an important scene in the middle build of my current WIP. If you need me, I'll be trying2write.
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