Aspirations, Like Journeys, Begin With A Single Step

So this is my first post of my first blog. And I'm so excited! I love to write, and one day hope to publish many books. But for now, I want to have somewhere to write when a story just won't come. And I will probably post parts of stories looking for feedback, when I have something I think is good enough to show people! For now, though, I am just getting the feel of this.

This is the first step in my Aspirations to Greatness. I'm taking the advice of my very good friend and amazing author in making this blog. Hopefully it will cure writer's block. I have this problem where I get a flash of inspiration and start writing what I think will be an amazing story, until I get about 4 pages in... (if that much) and it just kind of fizzles. Ends. Pfflt. And that is as far as I can take it. Then I got asked to write the next section of someone else's story, and lo and behold! It was so much easier! Of course I was only supposed to write one page, so who knows if the ease of writing would have continued, but for the brief half an hour I wrote it in, I felt invincible! No writer's block was going to get me!!

I now hope to draw on that feeling and perhaps continue some of the hundreds of 2-4 page starts I have. Perhaps one will blossom into something worthy of being called a book. Books that someday might be read by people all over the U.S.! I've always felt there was nothing quite so discouraging as a page of words left unread. It always helped having my friends so willing, even eager, to read what I'd attempted to write. They always gave positive yet helpful criticism, and if not for that, I might not still be writing. I have a lot to thank them for.

Author's note: While this is mostly to help with my fledgling career as an author, I will time to time put in things from my life. And if it seems I am going off on a tangent... well I apologize to all the English teachers I have ever had, but I am allowed to here!!!

Anyways. I do have to say I revel in the freedom of writing things for myself, not because they were assigned, or ordered, or required for this or that. I like taking artistic prerogative and using, dare I say it, punctuation and grammar however I feel like using them! It makes it so much easier to express one's voice with this type of freedom. I do take quite a bit of freedom in my stories as well, but not so much as to make them unreadable. I want them to flow well, as if I were telling a story aloud.

With that said, I'm off to write more. As the title says, things begin with a single step. What it doesn't say is how hard the steps become after that first one! But as long as I never quit taking those steps, if only a few now and then, it will all pay off in the end.

"It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."
-Ursula K. LeGuin