What if

         What if I don’t have anything o say? Or if the things I do want to say aren’t worthwhile? I think those are the two biggest fears I have concerning writing. I am a writer. In my heart I am a writer. I know somewhere inside me there are ideas and stories of profound importance that I need to write and publish for the world to read. Yet, instead of picking up a pen and paper or turning on my laptop…I hop on facebook. Why? Why do I hide from what I am longing to do?



I remember the day I finished the first and only book I have written. I was so proud of myself; so moved by the characters in my story I wanted to cry. Maybe I did. For the first time I told all the people important to me I had written a book. Even now after hours of rewriting and editing my story I find there are times I can’t stop reading those words over; even though I know the story by heart; it was my heart for several long years.



Of course the fruit of my labor is yet unpublished and most likely will stay that way. After numerous impersonal, form letter rejections I have stopped even trying. Why? I read crap books all the time; wondering half way through how did this junk get published and my brilliant reflective story got a big fat form letter stating no way in hell?? And yet; I won’t even let my friends read what I wrote. A form letter is one thing; rejection from the people I love most a total different story.



I love to read, I love fiction. I am so amazed at the ideas and concepts authors come up with that hook me from chapter one. I remember the very first love story I ever read it was 21 years ago; yet I remember the moment I selected it from my grandmother’s book shelf. Thank you Danielle Steel for writing Thurston House; it changed my life and gave me a dream. I knew when I finished that book; if not before; I wanted to write a story that would make people cry, laugh, and wish to fall in love. I still reach for that dream.



I recently thought about framing the first rejection letter I received from a publisher in New York. I thought, if I hung it in my office it would inspire me to keep writing; more importantly maybe to keep dreaming. Then maybe one day when someone did take a risk on me and publish words I had written; I could look back at that letter seeing not that I had once failed but that I had come so far. The letter still sits in a drawer. Which must mean I am afraid to hang it; what if I never look at it as a published writer? What if…what if…what if?



Who knew those two simple words…What if….could mean such vastly different things? What if I never fall in love? What if I do and then fall out? What if I never realize my dream? What if I get struck by lightning? What if I don’t have anything to say?



On the other hand….What if I do have something to say? What if just the simple act of writing for me is success enough? What if I fall in love, then out but it was so worth it? What if I find a new dream even better than the last? What if one day I open a magazine; or search a library shelf to find my dreams, my words, staring back at me? What if…..? Two very simple words. So simple you might think they mean nothing. For me, to me, they mean everything.



They way I figure it I can look it at the BIG what if’s running around in my brain in one of two ways. I can hide behind them; and never do anything more important than update my face book status. I can choose to leave that rejection notice (or all 7 of them) lost in a drawer; my book and all possible future books locked inside myself because the what if’s are just too damn scary.

Or…I maybe I will go out and buy that frame. What if that will be the most important step I take?