What kind of person are you?

First of all, I want to give props to Ashley for putting up such a fantastic (and very true!) post recently. With all we have going on (school, work, family, friends), it's definitely more difficult than ever for us aspiring writers to make ANY progress with our "work," let alone get anything published.

Now that I am holding down a full-time job and have decided (wisely, I think) to give my graduate program at USF a break, I am finding that it is difficult to muster the energy to come home and write after an entire day's work. However, like Ashley mentioned, if you want it bad enough, you will make the time to do so, even if it means having to sacrifice some things for a while.

In my case, I feel like actual progress with my screenplay is long overdue. Just to put this in perspective, I have been mulling the idea of writing a screenplay since high school (!) and still have not truly completed one. There are a million things I can blame this on, but really, it comes down to the fact that I have been too lazy to discipline myself to... just get it done already! As a result, I have been dissatisfied with several aspects of my life for a while (seeing years tick by while your passion project collects dust will do that to you).

But recently, I realized that the very fact that this stagnant state of my startup creative writing career was affecting my mood was a clear indication that writing is what I was meant to do. Besides my journalistic day job, I have come to see that telling stories is not only something that I want to do... it's something I have to do. My disappointment was a testament to that. For years, I have had dozens of stories burst into my head, and not on had fully come to fruition. After all the days spent thinking and analyzing and mulling over story ideas and where to take them, I still could not honestly refer to myself as a creative writer.

That's just the kind of person I am. I don't seek out these creative thoughts (ideas for short stories, screenplays, songs, novels, etc...). They just come to me, and I see now that I am destined (if you could call it that) to transcribe them to the best of my ability and share them with the world. How else do you explain it when your best ideas come when you're not even trying? Like I said, being a writer is my calling. It's who I am.

So... what kind of person are you?