Validation!

You know how you can struggle, wondering whether you are worth anything at anything? Particularly a "gift" like writing. I never wanted to write. Writing a novel was never a dream of mine. My husband's yes. Which is a bummer for me. It is like I get to live his dream.

Anyway.

People told me I was a good writer. That it was something I should do. And I found myself thinking things, word crafting, finding the way I would say it, and eventually I started writing those things down. They were usually one liners. Then I would think of them as titles. Then articles. Finally I even got a book idea or two. And I began to write.

I made the mistake of telling some people what I was up to. They would give me pieces of information about contests. And then I finaled in a contest that had a thousand entries. Oh, and the comments were a bloody massacre. One day I think I'm hot stuff. "I Finaled!" Next, I'm blubbering on the floor because they just don't get it.

I was saying....

So I wrote an article. Got picked up right away. I'm thinking the odds are in my favor and I really must be "good." And then, dry spell. Favorite author calls me talented, agents like my voice, editors call my ideas "whacky, zany, and so apropos." But no one is buying. I began to question what on earth I was doing. Why would a sane person do this to themselves? Don't we have enough rejection in our everyday lives?

Don't even bother pointing out all the tense shifts that happened in that paragraph. I know.

But I tried out, or applied, or something for a columnists position for the local paper a couple weeks ago and the editor (I guess) called and offered the position (shared with five others, I believe). It makes me think...I must not totally stink.

I don't even know at this point if I get paid or if this is a vanity thing. Scary that I'm not even sure I care. Someone thinks I'm okay. Either that or no one else applied. Or they think my theology is just screwey enough that I will make Christianity look bad. Who knows? But for now, I'm going to believe that I just might have a little of that something that makes a writer good.