I was given some advice a while ago by Lucy-S that I have been trying to put into practice, at least in part.
Like most people on this site, and perhaps like many educated Americans, I think of myself, in vague terms, as a writer. Plans for that Great American Novel have been bumping around in my head since I was 12 or 13. Of course, maybe it is just the okay American short story that will be published in a literary magazine and read by a few hundred people. In any case, I have all these ideas, and I have always wanted someone to read them.
There has been a couple of obstacles to that. One of which is that literary fiction is kind of a dying genre. Another is that I often lack the self-discipline to write. Yet another is that (as you might have noticed), I sometimes have troubles with the mechanics of writing. But there is an even more important Sword of Damocles, hanging over me and writing.
And this is the matter that Lucy-S cleared up: I asked her what the difference between a writer and an amateur was. Do writers have some type of aura or cocoon that settles on them, that allows the scenes and the dialog to flow smoothly? Where the mechanics of writing and the meaning of plot all just come out together at exactly the right consistency? And the answer she gave me was "no". Published writers are just amateurs that keep trying.
As silly as it sounds, I guess part of me was just waiting for "inspiration" to settle down on me, that I would get an idea and it would just be perfect and I would effortlessly run with it. But since receiving this advice, I have realized that its just not going to happen that way. At least for me, and at least not anytime soon.
So, while I still don't know about commercial viability, I have decided to write every day. Even when the sentences come out of brain clunky and uninspired, and when I can't seem to reach the point I am trying to communicate, I keep writing. This writing, right now, does not mean something for commercial publication, but it does mean something submitted to a general audience that has some standards. So my writeup on the North Dakota Caucus counts. Writing on Livejournal doesn't. This daylog doesn't, either.
And I have already learned a valuable lesson: writing when I am not in the mood for writing can often be just as good as writing when I feel inspired. Even if I go through the steps mechanically, at the end I often have a product that I feel some small amount of satisfaction with. And while I don't know what will come of this, I am happy with my results so far.
Which, by the way, includes getting to 1500 writeups. Time to go change my mission statement!