This sign welcomed people to my talk on Self-Publishing and a book signing for both books in the Chalice Rose Series: The Sword Argente and The Crown of the Crescent Moon.
It is my passion to help others do what I have done–to get their books published. I have been discouraged many times in my life, particularly in my writing. It has taken me most of my life to decide to do it anyway–convinced that my writing must be terrible–because I didn’t want to regret not doing it as I lay on my deathbed.
Imagine my surprise when people LIKED my books, lauded me for getting them done, and were eager for more. So now I am fiercely passionate about helping others do the same so that they don’t feel that crushing sense of inadequacy about the thing they want to do most in the world.
I think my motto may be “Don’t wind up like Zelda Fitzgerald!”
I was always a little perplexed by Zelda Fitzgerals’s obsession with ballet. Didn’t she know she wasn’t that good? Now I know better. Now I can read between the lines. Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia (bolding is mine):
She rekindled her studies too late in life to become a truly exceptional dancer, but she insisted on grueling daily practice (up to eight hours a day[60]) that contributed to her subsequent physical and mental exhaustion.[61] In September 1929, she was invited to join the ballet school of the San Carlo Opera Ballet Company in Naples, but, as close as this was to the success she desired, she declined the invitation.[62] While the public still believed the Fitzgeralds to live a life of glamor, friends noted that the couple’s partying had somewhere gone from fashionable to self-destructive—both had become unpleasant company.[63]
In April 1930, Zelda was admitted to a sanatorium in France where, after months of observation and treatment and a consultation with one of Europe’s leading psychiatrists, Doctor Eugen Bleuler,[64] she was diagnosed as a schizophrenic.[65] Initially admitted to a hospital outside Paris, she was later moved to a clinic in Montreux, Switzerland. The clinic primarily treated gastrointestinal ailments, and because of her profound psychological problems she was moved to a psychiatric facility in Prangins on the shores of Lake Geneva. “
Wikipedia
I know now how easily a woman could be committed to a sanatorium years ago for sins such as reading too many books. Did you know that she wrote a book, and Scott was furious because she used things that he wanted to use in HIS book, and made her take them out?
To me it is obvious now that Zelda was crushed by the men around her. Nothing she wanted to do was preceived as having any value. They drove her mad, and then committed her.
So what if she wanted to dance? It made her soul sing! I don’t care what it is that awakens your passion, just follow it, follow your bliss as Joseph Campbell would say.
And finally, in the words of Natasha Bedingfield from her song Unwritten:
I’m just beginning, the pen’s in my hand
Ending unplanned
Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten
C.K. Sholly 