I just read The Invisible Child: On Reading and Writing Books for Children, a collection of speeches by Katherine Paterson, one of my favorite children’s authors. Of course, now I want to write children’s books. The problem is that when I read Tolkien I want to create a fantasy world, and when I read Dorothy Sayers or Agatha Christie I want to write murder mysteries. And when I read poetry, I want to become a poet. When I read a really good blog entry, I even want to become a really good blogger.
I’m such a copycat, and no one wants to be a copycat. I know that wanting to write, and being a writer who does the real work of a writer are two very different things. I simply can’t help feeling that I might actually be able to do the work if I disciplined myself and did it. However, I’m also afraid that whatever I wrote would look like a pale imitation of whatever I read last. And such derivative writing wouldn’t be worth the time and energy it took to do it.
So, for now, my inner writer remains mostly invisible. Except here on this blog.