by Medjine Barionnette
I had, and sometimes still do have, a fear of not being great. I used to think, “If I can’t be a great writer, I shouldn’t be one at all.” I’ve wasted so many years not pursuing something that I love, something I’m good at, because I was scared of it, because I was scared of mediocrity. I’d tell people, “I love writing; that’s why I don’t ever want to do it for work,” but that was always a lie. Getting paid to make up stories and fanciful tales of heroines and heroes falling in and out of love while the world falls apart around them (oh! new story idea)…I would love that.
The only thing that stopped me was not being great at it.
But the real gag about being “great” is that it doesn’t happen overnight.
It happens with thirty minutes today, fifteen tomorrow, an hour on Saturday, and five minutes on Sunday. It happens when you know that what you’re writing is shit—at least for now—but you commit to it anyway, until you eventually realize it’s one of the best things you’ve ever put together. It’s never deleting all your work—your random ramblings, your short stories, or that novel draft you were 80 percent of the way through (oops)—even if you don’t know how you could turn any of it into more than a rough draft.
Being great is showing up every day, even if it’s just to jot down a few notes or make an outline of something that will inevitably become nothing at all.
I was always battling with, “What if it takes too long? What if I never get there before I have kids or a life where I can’t focus on writing? What if I run out of time?” I’m currently twenty-six, by the way, acting like my best years are behind me. But no matter how old you are, I say this with as much confidence and gusto as I can: Your best years are always ahead of you. You can always be better than you were last year, last month, last week, or even yesterday.
There's no time frame for achieving greatness (as an author or anything else). Some reach it early and then spend the rest of their lives striving to top their biggest successes. Some don’t get there until it’s their last year on this giant floating rock, and some reach it just in time to enjoy it for what it is: something fleeting and hard won. No matter when it happens, it’s because you worked toward that goal in some way, every day.
Lastly, nobody but you gets to decide when you’ve “gotten there.” For me, being great is having, at the very least (the minimum amount! The lowest quantity!), two best sellers, one of which I hope becomes a classic they teach in schools long after I’m gone.
But I know I won’t achieve that goal overnight. And if I try, I’ll burn out. It takes time and patience and incremental progress. So that’s what I’ve committed to: the baby steps I have to take to become the author I want to be.
I’m a good writer.
I know that. There is no ego or arrogance in that statement; it’s just something I know is true about myself. I can be, and I will be, a great one. So this post is the first of many baby steps. This post is my first “30 minutes every day.” Now, that does not mean I’ll be writing a post everyday (I’m still just a baby after all); it just means that I’m committing to writing something everyday, and if that something just so happens to be worth posting, then I’ll send it over, hoping that someone else *wink, wink to Sarah* will think it’s worth reading.
Medjine Barionnette is an author and Inkwell member living in Austin, TX, and redefining her relationship to writing during a new phase of life. She’ll be chronicling her journey on the Inkdrop Lit blog.