Tuesday, November 24, 2009

1. Hi, I'm Vanessa

I see myself as a perfectionist and I usually feel responsible for everything around me.
One day I tried to let go and take some months off to see what I really like doing. Writing came up sharp and clean in my own vision of what I’m afraid of trying. And you know what they say about that. Even scarier – to write in my 2nd language – which I’m doing at the moment.

Excuses: I had my full-time job and exercised perfectness so that when I got home I felt I did ‘my part’. I wasn’t happy. Great pay check, job in my degree area, happily married and thinking the next step was pregnancy (30 is the time to go, right?). Everything society expected me to. And yet the more I accomplished the more lost and stressed I behaved. So I knew I had to take some radical step to break the pattern. I stopped my full-time torture of a job and did nothing (for a couple of days). Then I was reading about Creative Writing.

It’s only been a month now and I don’t want to be at home and unemployed forever – also scary – but I know it’s the only way I take my dreams seriously. I'm being honest with myself, and better to try all craziness before we decide to have kids, bank loans or any other priority, right?

I studied Mary Mackie's 'Creative Editing' before I started writing. She's great. As a perfectionist I love to edit and every word has to bring something relevant or it’s just self indulgence. Now I understand why I dropped accomplished authors; somewhere in between they stopped being relevant and wrote too much to say what could have taken a small (brilliant) paragraph. I want my books to be brilliant and ‘undroppable’ one day.

Good luck with your dreams.
Vanessa
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