"What Really Knocks Me Out is a Book That, When You're All Done Reading It, You Wish the Author That Wrote it Was a Terrific Friend of Yours and You Could Call Him Up on the Phone Whenever You Felt Like It."

I have always wanted to be a writer. Even when I was about 10 or 11 years old, I would write short stories on our typewriter. We had a damn computer at the time. I don't really know why I used the typewriter. Something about the noise it made that I think felt so satisfying. Like each clang of the key and dig of the return demonstrated progress in a way that a boring computer keyboard couldn't. Nowadays, I even have strange preferences for the sounds of the keyboards I use.

What I recall about writing those short stories though was that I never finished them. I had so many ideas and I would just write without much planning or thought. The story would just flow and not make a lot of sense, and I would generally end up abandoning my efforts. Hey, I was 10. Give a girl a break.

I never really spent since then to develop the skills to be a writer. I do actually work as a writer, but it's scientific, technical writing, not creative in any way. I can spout stuff off in a blog post here and there but I've come to learn that there is an entirely different skill set to write creatively. Every time I try, it's such a painful laborious process. It can take me hours just to get a page of text down. Maybe it's not all that different than other writers, but sometimes it's frustrating that it doesn't come more easily. Or maybe it's frustrating to me that I haven't devoted enough work to being better at it. Is it regrets of not pursuing what I have always wanted to? Probably, more than anything.

I have an itch to shake things up. A full time stable job is great and security is a lovely thing and all, and I really do like what I do, but an overall ennui makes me feel like I'm missing out on something that would make me happier. Maybe it's not just limited to a job though. Maybe I need to shake some other stuff up too. Move? Buy a house? Exotic travel? We'll see.

As far as progress on The Naked And The Dead, I'm about 400/700 pages in. I've been sticking with it pretty regularly, but it's just slow going. Hopefully I'll finish it by the end of the month.

Another birthday passed. Another year closer to trying to meet this goal.