The following is an insightful article from my fellow writer, Cindy Vine, who lives at the foot of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

So your Grade 4 teacher told you that you were really good at writing stories, and now twenty years later you’ve decided to become a writer.  Stop right there, don’t take another step.  Take a deep breath, close your eyes and calm down.  Writing is not for the faint-hearted, and not a quick get rich scheme either.  It’s not as easy as it appears.  Writing takes time, commitment, dedication, discipline and yeah if you have talent, that’ll help it along a bit.

Many people think they can write.  However, not many people will make money from their writing.  Not many have the required discipline, as many times you are racing around being a parent, holding down a full-time job and then trying to write a novel on the side.  Thousands start and then drop out when the going gets tough.  And then when you think you have succeeded, when you’ve finally managed to write that novel, then you have to find an agent, or self-publish and change from being a writer to a marketer.

Writing fiction means you’re going to have to dig deep within yourself.  If you’re not a very organized person, this can be a mission.  The vision you might have of a writer sitting in front of a computer or a notebook and pencil, pouring out words and just start writing is a fallacy.  Not many best-selling authors do that.  You have to start with a plan, you have to write an outline, character sketches, have a plot.  You might need to do some research, talk to people, make notes on little index cards.  You might even need to do some writing exercises to get you going.  Writing is work.

Of course, there’ll be days when you can’t focus and will be more interested in staring out of the window wondering why the milkman is delivering the milk inside the neighbour’s house, and not just leaving the carton on the doorstep.  You might reach a dead end; decide your story’s no good and that you have to start over.  Your main character might be such a nasty piece of work that you decide to kill them off at the end of the first chapter.  There’ll be more things that will thwart your progress than you ever imagined.  Writing is hard work.  It is not glamorous, you will not become instantly famous; and Mrs Brown from the cake shop will not dash in front of oncoming traffic just to get your autograph when she spots you across the road.

Writing is hazardous for your mental and social life.  You’ll find it hard to go out because you want to first get a chapter finished.  Then when that chapter is finished, you’ll be on a roll and want to write just one more chapter.  The next thing you know, it’ll be 1am and the party will be long over.  You’ll obsess over your plot and characters, chew your nails down to the quick, and pull out your hair until you have bald spots that will get badly burnt in the sun, which in turn will affect your brain.  Hazardous, I tell you!  You have no idea!

So if writing is such a challenge, why do so many of us choose to do it?  I personally think that the time my mother dropped me on my head as a baby, it knocked my brain about a bit.  Sort of, jiggled it around inside my skull, so that my hemispheres got mixed up.  Jokes aside, we write because we are creative, we love living an alternate life through our characters, and we are addicted to writing.  I get antsy if I don’t write something every day.  Writing gives us pleasure and joy.  It drives me, giving me energy, stamina and willpower I never believed I had.  The satisfaction you get when you finish tidying up your final draft is indescribable. Writing completes me.  All my life I’ve been an observer, studying people.  Now when I meet people and go to new places, I view them as material and file their descriptions away in my skullofax inside my head.  I did tell you I was dropped on my head as a baby, didn’t I?

If you believe me when I tell you that writing is like running an ultra-marathon, you have to train and be disciplined, and you still want to do it – then I say go for it.  Give it a shot.  You have nothing to lose other than your time.  Just be aware that it is not as easy as it seems.  But I believe in you; you can do it.  Because if I could do it, Miss Disorganized, Miss Undisciplined, Miss No-willpower, then so can you.  And the euphoria you feel when you see your name in print, your book on the shelf…orgasmic.

Cindy is a mother, teacher and writer.  As a working mother, she’s managed to write a self-help book called Fear, Phobias and Frozen Feet; a semi-autobiographical account of an escape from an abusive marriage called Stop the World, I Need to Pee; a novel about a little boy’s traumatic life called The Case of Billy B; a novel about jealousy, hate and betrayal and the biggest dilemma of all called Not Telling; and a children’s picture book about solving a problem with a bully called Fighting Fisi.  All her books are available on Amazon.com.  You can follow Cindy’s blogs on http://cindy-vine.blogspot.com; http://cindyvinesrelationshipadvice.blogspot.com or find out more about Cindy Vine and her books on http://cindyvine.com.  Follow on Facebook http://facebook.com/cindyvinefanpage or Twitter http://twitter.com/cindyvine