I worry that my first novel was my last one, the only one I had in me despite the fact I've got 2 or 3 others in various stages of competion.
I worry that I can't complete several short stories because my day job is sucking the life out of me.
I worry about my next idea not coming soon enough to write it fast enough.
I worry about the rent and the electrical and the cable and the $900 of new medical bills I recently acquired and the condition for which remains untreated.
I worry about not being able to write with hands crippled by arthritis.
What I don't worry about? The fact that the next story idea will come, that I can write it, that I'll get through the occasional doldrums, that writer's block is fleeting and imaginary, a figment of my own procrastination, that every day is an opportunity to improve and grow, that my stuff will sell, that I'm not good enough, that I cannot fail because I won't let myself do so nor will the people who read my stuff, that I can pay the bills next month via my day job, but one day my writing will pay those things for me, that I have a future and part of that future includes me as a writer.
It's called hope.
It's a simple 4-letter word, but it's more powerful than almost any other 4-letter word other than love which it is closely related to. Hope is stronger than hate, stronger than lust, stronger than words far longer and far more recognized. Hope is what drives every human being to strive, to drive, to continue on when dark clouds threaten and the wolves are at the door.
Hope is why we write.
Hope that we can express ourselves such that someone else "out there" might, just might, one day understand.
Hope that we might one day, somehow, some way, make a living writing.
Hope that, by some miracle, fortune might shine upon us one day and we will find that voice and be able to express it such that we know we will have said something important.
Hope that we might, one day, entertain even one single other person.
Hope that we might leave something of ourselves to friends, to family, to people unknown, who will remember us long after we have gone on to the big office beyond.
Hope that some small piece of us remains when we're gone.
Hope.
It's a simple word. A 4-letter word.
But it's a writer's word.
Every writer ought to have it framed over their desk so they can look up at it when the doubts come.
Hope.
It's a conjure word too. It has the ability to conjure a writer to roust himself out of the worst depression, the worst pain, the worst doldrums, the worst of anything you can imagine and drive him back to the keyboard or the pad and pen/pencil.
Hope.
It's a writer's word.
Emblazoned it on your heart and over your hearth and in your mind.
It's your word.
