I never would have thought that I would actually be a career writer. I never had that dream as a young girl, reading all those books and dreaming of spending my days clacking away at fiction. In fact, I thought I was good, but average at best. To be completely honest, I still don’t feel like my writing is anything of awe; nothing more than words effectively communicated to a wide enough audience. I guess the magic is in the fact that my writing is easily consumed.
I was following my normal humdrum “wake up” routine today and scrolled though my social media timelines when a video of our safe comfortable lives in the West was juxtaposed with the war and poverty in the East and across the African continent. This struck a cord with me, as my subconscious was already saturated with images of climate crisis, flooding, fires, starvation, plagues, disease and death. I felt compelled to write, because that’s what I can do. That’s my strength, the power of written word. Some will chastise me for not doing enough when they, themselves, have done nothing. But that’s okay, we all have our strengths and parts of play.
About three years ago, I wrote Advice from a Failed Startup Founder. Back then, life was very different for me, and I was determined to paint another picture for you: the rarely ever seen picture of failure. You see, most people only ever speak about their successes because they are ashamed of their failures, or they are afraid of the judgement from their peers. I can totally understand that, but I am neither afraid of judgement nor ashamed of my failures. Failure to me isn’t really failure; quitting means failure, giving up means failure. What most people view as a failure, is really a lesson for me, a crash course in what not to do next time. When a child learns to write or draw or even walk, they learn it through micro-failures that teach them all the ways they didn’t achieve their objective. Similarly, failure to me is just a lesson in what not to do next time.
So just a short, swift update to address the on/off silence on this blog: I’m officially a paid, FULL TIME writer now!
It’s been about ten years in the making and now a new client has graciously given me this opportunity. The imposter syndrome and writers’ block is real. Man, I wish sometimes I could just switch it all off, but I just have to work around it and find different ways to work with it. It’s been a very interesting few months, and that’s all I can say!
But yes, being a paid writer is awesome. And being a paid writer with the ability to work from anywhere in the world is even more awesome.
I’m still pinching myself.. and when I can muster up a few more words, I’ll add them in here.
I’m Désiré, a professional writer and marketing expert. I run an creative agency called TILT Creative, specialising in content creation and managed solutions for social media, blogs and websites.
Here I publish blogs, articles and book snippets.
Enjoy the word vomit, and don’t forget to follow and share 🙂
From TILT Creative