A Pep Talk I Need

I’m new to writing—not gonna lie. I’ve been writing seriously for a grand total of 6 months. Problem is that I am quite impatient with the time it just takes to learn, practice, and improve. I want to be good NOW.
To help myself, I have to put things in perspective of what I already understand. I understand piano. So here is my piano learning metaphor that helps me slow down and appreciate the effort I’m putting in towards my progress.

Did every song I ever learned entertain anyone other than myself or my piano teachers? COUNTLESS songs, I mean countless went through my fingers repeatedly only to get a sticker or a check mark when I succeeded at playing it right.

Did I ever say: Why am I not a concert pianist now? Why won’t people call in and request my performances today? No. That isn’t why I learned and played. I played for myself because it satisfied a gift inside me. Once or twice a year I’d perform for a recital, one year was littered with festivals and ratings, but that was the extent of it, and I never thought that I loved playing the piano for the recognition. I dreamed of it often, yes. But I never had that sold-out audience.

But I cherish my piano playing talent. I honed that skill until I was very good at it, playing prestigious pieces and learning them because I loved to…I feel like I’m rambling here…

Writing.

Writing stories is a craft and an art. Am I in it for perfecting the craft and for that private satisfaction of knowing I’m writing really well? Honestly, not always. Almost all the time I’m writing for that publishing contract.

And it’s weighing on me in a bad way.

I need to relax and free myself—realize that I’m going to write a lot of “practice” scenes. Right now my writing is equivalent to sitting at the piano and trying to plink out a tune by ear. It’s exciting to feel like I know how to manipulate the instrument, and picking out a song by ear is a natural talent not many people have claim to—I can plink out a good scene, thought or story a little more naturally than some people—but will I stop there and be satisfied with that accomplishment or will I really dig deep “open that lesson book” and start really learning how music comes together and how to perform.

I want to perform. I do. What I have to understand then, is that it’s going to take TIME and a lot of learning and A LOT of application of that learning. I could learn about how to read music all day but until I sit at the piano and painfully go through figuring out each note…

Well, those are my musings for today. I’ve hit a big writer’s block and I’m struggling to understand whether it’s proof of my inability to conquer this art or if I’m just tired, weary.

I don’t want to give up.