I love watching author interviews. It can be informative to hear how each authors’ journeys to success have progressed differently. Watching an interview between two authors going back and forth can be an even better experience as they share their stories.
I find myself having some feelings though as I watch this recent video. It is a conversation between Stephen King and George R. R. Martin. They are asking each other questions back and forth and telling all kinds of stories about when they were young ones.
The first thing I feel is inspired. As I’m listening to the video I open the document that is one of the two novels I am actively working on. (As I work a full-time job, this means I write randomly and sporadically, and never as much as I wish I could). 
As I continued to listen I also became a little disappointed in myself, because I don’t write as much as I want or should and I haven’t finished my novels. I haven’t published anything in any significant publication and so it’s easy to take that to mean that I’m not a real writer or that I’ll never publish anything.
My disappointment further digresses into something uglier. That voice in my head that says I’ll never be published, because I’m not good. But just as I’m getting swept up by this train of thought I ask myself…
“Do I care?” What if this is true and I never get published. Would I stop writing my stories? And I know the answer of course not. Even if no one ever read anything I created I would still want to write it down, because I enjoy the act of creating. I enjoy committing the words onto the page. Of typing so fast to get a thought written that the sentences are littered with typos and illegible to anyone including myself.
So the only thing from this video I will hold onto is the advice and stories I enjoyed listening to and the feeling of initial inspiration I felt.
I am a writer. Nothing else is relevant.
For your viewing pleasure here is the video that sparked the train of thought that led to this post.
