So here I sit, having made it to the computer on what I’ve deemed my first true day of going all in on writing.

As it has been for what seems time immemorial now, as soon as I wake up the anxiety within me takes center stage and starts dragging me around. It believes it is somehow doing me a service, but is anything but, making it extremely difficult to focus on anything, and leading all my muscles to a constant tension that leads them to fail. I’m hopeful that I can create a routine out of this and that things will improve, but like anything else it’s a crap shoot.

Began the day by reading portions of Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time while eating breakfast. Say whatever you want about the man, but he sure was a hell of a writer. So I’m thinking about that and I’m thinking about this quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald that I found in the 1985 book F. Scott Fitzgerald On Writing, which compiles many of his sayings related to writing:

“The history of my life is the history of the struggle between an overwhelming urge to write and a combination of circumstances bent on keeping me from it.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

I suppose that is how it is for all of us, unless you are independently wealthy and already have a great support system. Or maybe not even then. Art, whatever form it is, if it comes from the heart, is undertaken because the creator has an innate need to, and when unable to meet that need is full of great psychological disturbances. Why else would anyone undertake something that they may invest hundreds or thousands of hours into without ever receiving tangible benefit? I’m in no way saying that I am a “great” writer, but even if I was, even if I was a complete genius, there would still be absolutely no guarantee that anyone in the publishing industry would take me seriously and get my books on the shelf. That’s a hell of a thing to go into a project knowing. And I can’t think of any other profession where that holds true.

So let’s just keep at it, work hard, keep learning, keep improving and hope that whatever unseen forces are out there smile down on us and give us our break.