Nearly 1500 words today.  It’s taken me nearly an hour and a half to write this much.  It’s been non stop stumbling.  Write.  Look at what I wrote.  Stop.  Think that it sucks.  And then remember that yesterday a poet described my writing as “rainbows.”

Four rainbows to be specific.

I have got to stop bashing myself.  I don’t want to become an egotistical idiot.  I don’t want to stand on my pedestal and stare downwards at the masses surging around my feet.  I’m most happy with my happy little corner of the world.

But somewhere, I have let that voice in the back of my head destroy my confidence related to writing.  I have felt that to be proud of my talent required me to be ashamed of myself.

So, here’s my declaration of independence.

I, Grace Less Curran, have talent.  I can write.  And I love writing.  And I’m proud of my writing.  I love the fact that every now and then, I read what I wrote and forget that I wrote it.  I have nothing to be ashamed over.  I write because writing is my life.  I write because without writing I have no life.

As I wrote on Absolute Write.com, I write because I have ink in my veins and words are my currency.  And I am tired of hearing that doubting voice that lives in the back of my head and tells me that I will never, ever succeed.

I’m stomping on that voice. I don’t need it.  I have been rejected.  I will be rejected again.  But, damn it.  It’s time to stop listening and questioning myself.

This last weekend was finding a solace, a sanctuary.  In a freezing cold library where I trembled under the layers of my brown ugly shirt, I found my voice.  I took note after note as a literary agent and then a professional writer spoke.  And I listened to them and not to the sound of self-deprecation that echoed through the heavy channels of my brain.

I am no James Joyce.  I am no Cormac McCarthy.  I will not try to scale their Mount Olympus.

But, I have my pen name.  If I am to be professionally published, I will use the pseudonym of Lee Anne Curran.  My father’s name is Lee.  My mother’s name is Diane.  I will bear the same last name as my beloved husband and children.

But, in the end, this is my writer’s name.  I have a name.  I have a name.  I have a name.  And I have a novel that I’ve restarted and I love my opening.  I think I have something.  I know it’s rough.  I’m okay with that.  I’m not in love with the words.  Not yet.  But I will be.

At this point, though, I haven’t done info-dumping.  And I’m good with that.