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Wasted years writing the wrong things
My writing was terrible because my voice was never my own
I would get up early and grind out my five pages for the day, but those pages were, on the best days uninspired, and on most days a waste of paper destined for a scrunch and throw towards the garbage can across the room.
My goal was to write fiction, and I was inherently bad at it, but my self-imposed struggle was to create the Great American Novel and rise to the status of my heroes of literature. I wanted to be Henry Miller and write the controversial book banned for most of his life; I wanted to be Pat Conroy and write a book starting a discussion about fathers for a generation; and I secretly dreamed of being Ayn Rand and creating a book recognized as the greatest American book of the century.
The problem was that I wasn’t born to be that writer. What I read was not what I should be writing, and several years of a dawn writing discipline was draining any creativity I might have ever had
The realization fiction wasn’t going to be my life didn’t come until I smashed my laptop screen by slamming it down after a morning of endless frustration grinding out another five pages from literary hell. The pages were printed out, crumbled into a tight ball, stuffed along with their lost brothers in the can, and I never wrote fiction again…and that was…
