I Am A Writer

 

In October, I had an idea for a book I wanted to write and self-publish, based on my experience, and I want it to be listed as Penny Ann Poundwise.  I knew it would be unlikely to turn into a best seller, but I thought it might be a help (which was always my initial reason for writing as Penny Ann) and I felt it would be a good way to get my toes wet in the self-publishing field.  

I thought about it all of November and into December as the thing I was going to start in the New Year.  I was excited about it and spent time outlining it in my head and making lists of various things I will need to learn to carry it through.  It looked daunting, true, and I knew it would require a great deal of patience with myself and the processes I would need to go through, but I was certain this was my direction for 2026.

Then the dreaded internal critic awoke and said, "But what if no one wants it?"  "What if this isn't an inspiration at all?"  "What if you get 'locked' into being Penny Ann Poundwise all over again?" "What if you lose your way as a writer over all because you do this?"  "You don't even know how to do this."  "What if it requires money up front? You can't afford it!"

Around the first of December I decided to review my decision to let Blue House Journal cease and after lots of prayer and thinking, decided I needed to pick it back up.   Not as a safety net, not as an escape from exploring writing anything different, but simply because I missed the sort of sharing I did there.  And because that is not what I want to share here.    BHJ is a whole different vibe and feeling.

This blog has a different purpose.  It is meant to be more about inspiration and a willingness to explore my authentic self, about remembering who I am as a woman, as a person.  Not as a family member, wife, mother, or any of the other tags I might wear.  None of them are me.  I am part of all of them but none of them are who I am...Does that make sense?

But somehow, I let that change of mind about posting at BHJ really increase my self-doubt.  I couldn't congratulate myself on reversing a decision I'd not regretted so much as determined had not quite been what I'd wanted for me.  I needed the time away from BHJ and I needed to think about where I wanted to head with it and what I wanted to share there, but I hadn't been wrong exactly.  However, that critic in my head said, "Well there you are.  Made a mistake and now you've got to eat your pride and run back...You are a failure of the first class sort.  And this book you're planning will fail, too."

By the middle of December, I was sure this little book was the dumbest idea bar none and a huge mistake on my part.  The week before Christmas, I gave in to the doubt and gave up the idea entirely.

What I didn't expect after the decision to let the idea die was the huge sense of sadness and disappointment I felt.  I sat with it for a week or so.  No desire to write anything at all.  All the excitement and joy I'd been experiencing since August when I knew I was coming into a new chapter of life, disappeared.  I looked at life stretching before me, yawning at me, as though it were bored with me. 

I had to own that I was disappointed in myself.  I had let me down.

Doubt is a killer.  

What brought me back?  I started remembering what I know about me.

I wrote a book ages ago.  I began it long before we moved here to this home and finished it after we'd moved.  I had a great idea, and I wrote it with all my heart and soul exposed, long before we had a computer, written by hand, page after page.  No agent.  No publisher.  No idea how to find either one or where to go to make a submission.  Nothing but an idea and hope that somehow it would lead somewhere.

How do I know it was a great idea?  Because two other women wrote something very similar and both of them had their books published.  One became wildly, hugely popular.  The other woman's book gained a little momentum as an author but never made the best-selling list. 

She started a companion website based on her book and it was fairly popular.  I sent her some of my pieces and she took my submissions and published them because they fit entirely with her own vision and ideals.  I got all the credit for my work.  She didn't take anything from me.  She simply allowed me to share her space which I thought then and think now was rather lovely of her.  Eventually she became a life coach.  I'm not in the least surprised.  She was a huge encouragement to me in that space of my life.

And being published on her website led me to other e-zines where I submitted other pieces of my book and they published them for a wide audience to read.

So, my book didn't get published but portions of it got published.  It accomplished something.  It encouraged me. It made me keep showing up, even though I had no audience.  It made me feel I'd done something towards my lifelong dream of wanting to be a writer.  

It encouraged me to keep writing, to take writing courses as I could find them in order to be better at my chosen craft.  To keep going.  Eventually I started the Penny Ann Poundwise newsletter at Yahoo!groups and it had a decent audience with some popularity.  I moved to Xanga and other editors/publishers requested I write for their self-published magazines or e-zines with similar toned articles based on those writings.  

So, I've had some reason to believe I can write...

But that damned critic still sits in my head and shouts doubt at me until I can't think straight.  He/She brings up all the reasons why I cannot do this or that, especially write.  And old I.C. (inner critic) says things like, "Yeah but... you've never made more than $xxx...so you can't possibly count yourself as a 'real' writer."  "Who...you?" I'd hear, if I dared tell anyone I was a writer.  

Mostly, I've kept my head down.  I've plodded along, knowing in my heart of hearts that at times, I am good and that a lot more often I was putting out some fairly mediocre stuff.  Just idly chatting away on a computer screen without a lot of purpose but chatty all the same.  

I stopped telling people I was a writer.  If they asked, I'd own I wrote but I always felt ashamed that I had only my blog work to show for it.  I'd heard often enough that anyone who did what they loved would find that money followed.  Well, not always as it happens...And money is the real measure of the value of most things in this world we live in, isn't it?  I couldn't claim financial gain.  Therefore, I must not be a 'real' writer.   Not just my thinking, mind you.  There are many who will tell you so. 

It didn't matter how often I heard from any of you readers that I had touched, moved, helped you.  I simply couldn't own my talent.  I didn't have numbers big enough.  I didn't earn money at my craft. I just wrote because damn it all, I can't seem to stop.   Words are shut up in my bones and burn like fire.  

When Jeff initially approached John after a talent show about joining his small group at church, meant for creative talents, I asked if I might come along.  "Well, it's for creatives..." he said and boldly I replied, "Well I write..." and when he asked me what I wrote, I told him, "A blog that is mostly about frugal living."  Which was the truth.  I didn't want to appear to make myself out as something I wasn't...  

I shall never forget the look in his eyes.  Doubt.  Distrust that I might possibly prove to be anything but a hanger-on, not an asset to his group at all.  He said very slowly and reluctantly, "Weeellll...I guess you can come along, too.  But you need to bring some of your work."    I think really, he said I could come only because he felt that John might be more prone to come if I went along.  In that he was right.  

But his reaction, his initial reluctance, kind of made me mad.  I resented it.  I did.  "Take me at my word," I wanted to cry out to him.  "I can TOO write!"  But you know I'd spent so many years floating along only barely believing in myself that I think it was more than that.  I was angry with me. I doubted me, too.  Doubt reeks like death when it hangs about your neck.  It's off-putting.  People don't want to hang around failure and doubt.

So I went home and sulked about.  John kept asking me what I'd like to share with the group as my first piece.  HE believed in me.  He always has.  But I was having a double portion of doubting me at this point.     

About that time a BHJ visitor was in the habit of leaving some nasty comments.  Mean and hateful and playing right into the doubt.  Vultures will come if the smell of death is heavy enough...

She wore me down.  I couldn't get away from the negativity and hatefulness, nor understand it.  I mean, I was hardly popular enough for anyone to feel the need to take me down a notch or fifteen but she sure as heck did.  And in a week that felt hard and difficult on too many scores, with her insistent cawing going on in the comments (all deleted but alive and well in my head), I wrote this piece, on the day we were meant to be going to our first meeting, as my heart reeled with aching and my soul was filled with every doubt.

When I read what I'd written to John he said, "There it is!  That's the piece you need to read tonight to the group." 

Jeff's friend at the time was a quilter and he'd made her part of the group.  Mind you I got a pretty clear idea of where I stood when he asked me to follow behind her sharing.  Yes, he did see her sewing as a talent, but not the inspired sort of view I think that he saw in John's music compositions, or the acting that another member did or the singing that another did... And my 'frugal blog' was right there with her sewing.

So, I stood up before the group and read an edited version of the piece that I'd written that afternoon.  I don't have the piece as I altered it.  Like most things I've written, it has been lost along the way.  But I don't need the piece to recall the effect my writing had that evening.  

I stood before this group of strangers, one who I knew seriously doubted I had anything worthwhile to offer.  I stood before the group and read my piece, and the room was silent except for sniffles.  Those words hit hard at everyone in that room just as they had hurt me when I was crying out on the computer screen about life's hurts.  When I ended the piece, they clapped.  Spontaneously.    

But most gratifying of all, was the one person in that room who held real doubt, gave it up fully and completely and did nothing but encourage me from that moment on.  

Over the years, he helped me to openly own my talent, to believe I had something to say or to share. 

I needed to remember that this week.  I needed to remember that it's MY doubt that holds me back.    

So, today I packed up that stinking doubt, tossed it out the door and sat down and began the book I'd promised myself to write.  Page 1, 2, 3...It's begun!  

I choose to believe in me.

I will never again be ashamed of what I do or how I do it.  I AM a writer.