Talent or intent?

About ten years ago I got this itch and started writing stories. I had the idea, thought about it for a while and then jotted it down on my notebook. A while later I typed it on our shared home computer and was done with it forever. That was writing for me for a long time.

I had no technique. No discipline. No routine.

I also didn’t believe I was a writer. It was just something I felt like doing.

I showed my stories to my father, who liked them and started printing them now and then on his local newspaper. My column was called E daí? (So what?)

I showed some of them to my professors at University and they provided me some good feedback.

People talked to me on the street about how they resonated with the stories I wrote. (I lived on a very small town). 

I moved to the US and started blogging about my experiences. I wrote some stories in English. I took a Fiction Writing workshop on Monday nights. That’s when I started dreaming about actually being a writer.

With the help from a friend I self-published a collection of short-stories at my old University press. 

And then I stopped writing. I don’t know why.

I spent a year in one of the most peaceful, beautiful places I had ever seen and I didn’t write a single story. I had a lot of free time and not a lot to worry about. Why didn’t I write? I lived in an effin tower right next to an effin castle, for god’s sake!

Maybe that hibernating time was necessary.

Now I write again and I gradually became more serious about it. I realized that writing is something I will always do, no matter what. I also admitted that I needed to improve a lot and this is what I’ve been trying:

• Write more.
• Read more. 
  
• Read about writing.
• Talk about writing.
• Ask friends to beta-read and give feedback.
  
• Re-write (Seriously the most important thing I’m learning right now.)
  
• Treat my writing as a job. Don’t schedule anything after I set that time for writing.
• Implement techniques like this one. 

Truth be said, I didn’t spend all day and I didn’t come up with one novel idea. I sat down for a couple of hours and in the end I had a series of ideas for short stories or novellas. They are placed right in front of me on my desk and whenever I finish a story I have a beautiful list to choose the next one from. 

At the moment I'm waiting for feedback from beta readers, creating a cover and writing a new short story. Then I need a final edit, formatting and a nice blurb. I never thought I'd be saying this. How exciting! 

How about you? Are you working on that big dream? Are you giving your talents a chance to flourish?