An inspiring tale of why being an aspiring author sucks

First and foremost, I would like you to read my bio. Did you like it? No? Me either. Perhaps I should have stuck with my first draft instead of my eighth. But that one wasn’t good enough either. And herein lies my problem with growing up aspiring to be an author.

I grew up reading Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and an uncountable amount of other fiction novels. I loved it. I loved reading and the places the stories took me. I grew up believing that it was okay to live in fantasy worlds. I also grew up believing that if I wrote something good enough, I could live my life creating fantastic worlds of fiction that somebody else could get lost in.

Fast forward to today. Unpublished novels on my computer tease me with my past dreams of success. I wrote and wrote and wrote. But someone forgot to fill me in on the part where it isn’t just about writing. It’s about heckling literary agents, formatting and reformatting a manuscript until you despise looking at it anymore, and the feeling of crippling defeat when you watch your friends pursue the things they love, while you just stare at your computer screen. And, oh yeah, it’s about writing cynical blog posts on the internet.

I am growing up like I never wanted to and, honestly, I am completely lost. I still love reading fantasy, but part of me feels like it’s time to put down the books I used to love and move on like everyone else has. The only hitch is: I can’t. All I want to do is write, to succeed in what I love to do. And although it might be difficult and heartbreaking, I can’t imagine living another way. And that’s why being an aspiring author sucks. You can’t give it up, no matter how much better off you imagine yourself if you did.