BAM! My New Year’s Resolution to Become an Author
What aspiring writer Parker Hilley promised—publicly—in 2019.
Well, folks, Toho Publishing here, and today we have something a little bit different. Today’s post comes to us from Parker Hilley from down in Georgia. Her bio’s below, but we’ll share with you that she’s a young aspiring writer, and if there’s one thing we aspire to here at Toho Publishing, it’s helping our fellow writers. So, without further ado, here’s Parker.
When you’re still young enough that you get asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” but old enough for your cohorts to have already put their diplomas to good use, the question becomes a sort of joke. The implication, of course, being that you’re already grown up …
“Surely you don’t want to be doing this for the rest of your life?”
Your “this” could be waiting tables or grooming dogs or any number of other odd jobs, but the answer is always, “No, I don’t want to be doing this for the rest of my life. I want to be an author.”
But more than that, you want to write books.
Actually write them, not just conceptualize them. But you’re constantly worried that your ideas surpass your abilities. So maybe that’s why you put off trying and blame your lack of accomplishment on work. Or why you feel like if your first attempt isn’t perfect, you might as well just give up.
But then you have an exceptionally difficult shift at the restaurant, and with a renewed sense of purpose, you try writing again. And maybe you’ll give up again and pick it up again and change directions and kill off your favorite character and scrap whole chunks of story entirely. It might be years and years of this — and you’re still no closer to the end of your story than you were before you’d begun writing. And you feel discouraged. And you quit, maybe for good this time, and resign yourself to the reality that you are already grown up, and it doesn’t matter what you want to be but what you’re able to be.
I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of working in a restaurant. I’m tired of having these stories in my head and nothing to show for the hours I’ve spent creating a world that only I can experience but a world that I want so desperately to share. So I’m making a resolution — and I hope you will too — to just push through those self-doubts and the nagging thoughts that you aren’t good enough to just finish one thing. I’m ready to be what I want to be when I grow up. And I’m ready to push myself to get there. Are you?
Parker Hilley is a restaurant general manager by day and a tortured writer by night. This Atlanta native enjoys pens that write really well, traveling, and napping with her three dogs. She hopes to follow through on her New Year’s resolution this year and complete her first novel by the end of 2019.
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