I always knew I wanted to be a writer. Ever since I could pick up a pencil, I’ve been creating stories, doing both the dialogue and the illustrations. More often than not, I’d make my mom write the whole thing out for me, because, at five years old, my handwriting was not what you’d call neat. Once I discovered computers, however, I taught myself how to type (incorrectly, but functional nevertheless). Ideas began pouring out of my head and onto the virtual page, becoming an endless waterfall of unfinished stories and incomplete plots. If I looked back on some of my old laptops and opened up all of my Word documents, about ninety nine percent of them would be concepts for novels I never finished. And it’s the same way now; I come up with a new idea, oh, every moment I stay conscious. Hell, even in my sleep, ideas are squeezing their way out of the darkest corners of my mind into my dreams.

But, no matter what I do, I can’t seem to finish a story. Not even short stories. It’s not that my concepts and plot lines aren’t good; I don’t mean to sound conceited, but I do have my fair share of ground-breaking ideas for a book. Nevertheless, when you’re like me, and you have a thousand new ideas a day, you can’t not drop everything and start working. It’s impossible to ignore it, and you just can’t wait to start this new plan and write everything out and get it all down before it disappears and you forget it all. You put everything on hold for this new idea, which you know will be great, and, once it’s published, will make you famous for your incredible writing.

And then tomorrow rolls around, stuffed with new plans for future novels like a Thanksgiving turkey.

My brain doesn’t like to cooperate with me. Today, I told myself I would work on a story I’m developing, set in a completely separate world from our own. Instead, I started making character bios for a story set in a 1920’s speakeasy. (Saying that concept will never be completed is an understatement.) It frustrates me that I can never follow through with anything, no matter how hard I try. I desperately want to become a writer, but I feel as if I’m too fickle to ever be.

Nowadays, I’m finding it’s becoming harder and harder to decide what I want to do with myself. I thought that I always knew what I wanted out of life, but once my perspective on one thing shifted, so did everything else. I’m realizing now how difficult it is to reach the goals we set for ourselves, and how it will only get worse as time goes on and life gets harder.

There is one thing I know for sure: I want to inspire people. I can’t act, or sing, or dance, or paint; writing is the only way I can truly express the way I feel. My real thoughts and honest opinions only come out on paper. I know I don’t have the best vocabulary, or use the strongest words, but I also know that you don’t always need the best sentence structure or the most descriptive words to create great work. I want to be able to reach out to people through novels that they can relate to, and motivate them to want to do something great as well. I may not be getting very far right now, but I know that I have the ability to reach my goal, and someday I will.

Now, all I have to do is put my fingers on the keys, turn on iTunes, and focus.