I can does writing, yes?

To the average person looking at my life, it would appear that I don't write. After all, what do I have to show for it? Not too much, and my laptop isn't talking. Sometimes, during some periods of time in my life, this average person would be right to question my writerlyness. They might be right to question my actual work ethics. After all, I am now 41 years old and I was supposed to be published and wildly popular by the time I was 30. Of course I cringe whenever I think of my writing style back then. So young, so naive. And as for the published at 30 thing? I think most life plans are a joke anyway, and the people who actually attempt to follow and accomplish them are a little weird (yes, me, the writer, is calling someone else weird! Where does the madness end?). They are even weirder if they succeed at it. I always look at such planners with suspicion. They can't be real humans who make huge, life-changing mistakes and have random bad things happen to them to divert the planned course like the rest of us mortals.

So back to evidence of being a writer. A person who likes to knit or quilt will have a lot of physical evidence of their talent either as presents to their long-suffering nieces and nephews in the forms of fuzzy sweaters, hats, or scarves, or family quilts that get sent down through the generations because wow, that Auntie Lala could sure quilt. A person who paints will have paintings sitting around that guests to her house could, in theory, ooh and aw over. And of course our dear Saturday Sequins and other people who make jewelry also have their beautiful work displayed so people can see it. It's easy to show someone a piece of jewelry you made or a painting. It takes one minute.

But what about writing? You can't very well make everyone at your family gathering shut up so you can read them what you have of your novel so far. Well, maybe if you passed out enough alcohol. And let me tell you, I guarantee it would be a helluva better entertainment than watching Dancing With the Stars or any of the other insipid reality shows out there these days.

What people don't know about me is that I have way more writing stored in my computer than you all can possibly imagine. I have so much writing on my computer that if you were trapped on a desert island for a year and could only have my computer (no internet) as entertainment, that you would most definitely keep yourself entertained for a long, long time.

Some of this writing is the six or seven (eight?) versions of the novel that I've been picking at since 1995. I've referred to this novel as the bad boyfriend who wears leather, drives a motorcycle, drinks a lot, is rude to me and cheats on me, and yet I still keep coming back to him. Yes, this is the bad boyfriend that I keep trying to change, keeping trying to break up with because we're definitely better off with other people, but no matter what, I always go back to him. After all, THIS time we're going to make it. THIS time he's not going to suck. Because let's face it, he has charisma and character and he's really hot. I've finished this novel multiple times but it's never enough.

Aside from that, I have a really strange novel I started soon after that while I was in Scotland in 2002. There are at least 100 pages of it. I have another that had started right around that same era that I really focused on more in 2003 when I came back from Scotland and was in school. I have a metric ton of fiction written based on some movies (more than you all can possibly imagine). And by the way, I keep that life VERY separate, so please no more said about that part. I only mention it as a point that I have written so much more than most people reading here can possibly imagine. I have short stories galore, my Nanowrimo novel from last year, multiple starts of brilliant ideas in which I got about 70 pages in and then decided to go back to bad boyfriend mentioned above. Recently I got a short story published in a Trinidadian collection of short stories. It has not been published yet, but it's in the final stage.

But because I don't display these things or offer to show people these things, it is as if it doesn't happen. I might even look somewhat normal to the outside world. After all, I have a day job that people ask me about all the time, and I will talk and vent about that, too, although after a time, I bore myself to tears talking about work. I think my big fear when it comes to what people think of me, which pretty much comes rarely since I usually do not care that much what people think of me, is that people will think I'm a poser because I talk about writing and being a writer and then obviously have very little to show for it. And maybe my even bigger fear is that they will be right because lately I have not spent nearly as much time on my craft as I should.

Although right now all I can think about is how sore my legs are from a six-mile run I took yesterday at a faster than usual pace. And because I randomly added in a detail about my running in this post about writing, I think that some day you guys should suffer through a post about how running and writing are actually very much alike. You non-runner writers will appreciate that.