Lately I've become frustrated with people who respond to the information 'I am a writer' with "oooooh! I've always wanted to be a writer I think could write a really good book, I've just never tried really…"
Uh-huh. This is basically the equivalent of me saying "oooh! You are an olympic marathon runner! I've always wanted to win gold in the olympics, but I've never really tried or anything." Just because you can basically operate a keyboard or pen doesn't neccessarily mean that you can construct an interesting, entertaining, thought provoking piece of fiction. In much the same way, just because I jog around my block a couple of nights a week doesn not mean I can run 10k in record time.
I think a lot of it stems from the whole American/Australian idol mentality of 'hand me my dreams on a platter and put me on TV please.' "Oh yes, being a singer has always been my DREAM! I mean, I haven't ever auditioned for a band, or sung in a choir, or played open mic nights, or gone to vocal training, but y'know, I'm pretty good at singstar n stuff…."
If you have a dream, a real ambition, then you do whatever it takes to make that happen. Sacrifice sleep, spend money, train, practice, fail and start again, whatever. You put that one ambition at the centre of your life and you do not stop until you have accomplished what you set out to do.
Now if only there was a reality TV show where you could get your debut novel on Oprah….