Don’t listen to anything “they” tell you.  If your heart tells you that you need to write, you need to write.

I will, forever, be that 4th grade girl who fell in love with writing.  I hid in the supply closet at school during recess and wrote.  My first story (thank you Ms Fitzgerald) was “The Cat, The Dog, and the Jellybeans”.

I wrote short stories and essays.  I wrote (and loved creating and playing with) poetry.  I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote.

And I was told that it was “cute” that I would carve out time to hide away to write whenever I could.  I would hide in the apple trees in the orchard and write to the smell of the blossoms and horse shit and rotting Maiden’s Blush apples and the sound of the bees and the breeze in the leaves.

I was told that “People Like Me” don’t write.  If you write, you will never get published and if you ever DO get published you will have to pay someone to publish your work and no one will ever read it.

I wasted so many years believing those words.

Don’t ever believe those words.

Everyone is people like you.  Everyone squirrels away dreams in their heart.  It might be writing.  It might be singing.  It might be painting or drawing.  Everyone has something.  Hold on to your something.  I won’t tell you that you will be the next over night success, the next JK Rowling or Stephen King, but someone has to be the next one and none of them thought they would be the next one either.

Put your feet on the floor and your butt in the chair (or the apple tree) and write.  Tie your dreams to the tail of your kite and fly.  If not you, then who?

 

Come on…

Take a chance.