I used to stress a lot about how, as a writer, I neither read, nor write. Obviously those are the two things every writer must do. Over my high school career, I read only what I had to (and admittedly sometimes not even that), and I wrote only when I had both inspiration and motivation, two factors that very rarely coincided.

So, one of my biggest fears was that I wouldn’t cut it as a writer, because I never felt like I wanted to read or write. But I’ve since discovered that none of that matters. Literally nothing I do when I’m fourteen through eighteen will really matter in ten years. People worry about who they aren’t and what they don’t do, but it could simply be because you’re not ready for it yet.

I’ve tried two longer projects in my career as a writer: Soldier of Nadu, and Dreamscape. The former has been written and rewritten several times, with the latest copy just over a year old and only about a third of the way finished, and the latter is some of my most recent fiction works, but I also haven’t written in a while and it’s also about a third of the way finished. My capacity as a long-term author, so far, has a limit of about twenty thousand words. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but at some point I stop wanting to do it. Here’s the thing, though. I don’t mind. I’m not worried about it.

It could simply be that I haven’t experienced enough of life to be “ready” to actually write a full length novel. No, I don’t think my personality needs to change or anything like that. I just don’t think I’m at the stage in my life where writing a book is the course of action I need to take. I don’t have any doubt that I’ll get there some day, but I’m not worried that I haven’t gotten there yet, either.

I think a lot of people go through this. I know half of the people I meet in college aren’t really sure what they want to do with their lives. In fact, I’d be lying if I said I was completely rock solid on the writing career. I’m simply continuing with it because, well, I have nothing else going for me, really. At least, nothing that I particularly enjoy. My point is, I think we all have to simply take the paths we feel like taking until we find the road we should be on. I could get into some other form of creative expression, but I’ll probably need to be a writer first to get there, and maybe I haven’t found it yet because I’m not ready for it, yet. You may know what you like now, but in six months you could hate it and move on to something else. But it’s also very possible that you never would have truly discovered that something else until you tried that first thing.

The only person you should be comparing yourself to is yourself. Be better than your past. The best part about that is that it isn’t hard. You’re always more knowledgeable than your past self, so basically it just happens naturally.