Clichés and myths

March is here, finally!

Although it does not mean any climatic change for us really (we're still way below zero degrees with snowstorms on the horizon), but it is the official first month of spring.

Springtime... Opened windows, warm winds and birds chirping, the sound of lawnmowers doing their dance and the smell of fresh-cut grass in the morning. How far it all seems now. I am definitely not a winter creature. Never have been. Never will be.

Proof: all my creative side managed to do for three whole months now is doubt. Self-doubt, story-doubt, talent-doubt, market-doubt, etc. I have spent so many months worrying that, comes March, I feel completely and totally psychologically drained. I believe it to be a matter of survival for me to move to warmer places... 

Anyway, like I said, March is here and, like every new month, it brings with itself the promise of renewal, of second chances, of change. This month, though, I have decided to tackle one of the most crippling thoughts I have had these past few months: the cliché.

As I've told my friend Eve this day, I have trouble shaking off the cliché of the "real" writer. Wherever we look, clichés are inked on us, on our minds. Unwillingly, I have fallen prey to them. I have believed for a very long time that "real writers" made plans; wrote for several hours every day; planted morals and hidden messages in their stories; concentrated on important social/political/ecological/etc. issues in their texts; have studied literature in a well-respected University; were brooding and incredibly smart creatures, etc. 

How can one (little me, for instance) live up to such expectations if they are not who one is?!

But I have tried so hard lately to fit in that mold. It's neither too small nor too big (I could have lived with that), it's simply not the right shape! It's like trying to fit a dice in a hole made for a marble!!
So finally, after all these years, I'm just starting to wake up and realize just how bad clichés and myths are. And I have decided that March would be the month that I would battle that dragon. Yes, I'm still looking, searching for who I am. And I'm still adjusting to calling myself a writer AND a pantser but at least, now, I'm saying it!
And if you say one thing long enough, you'll end up believing it, right?

So, no other goal in March but to get rid of the cliché perception I have of writers! Feel free to feed me in any article, blog post, etc. of famous writers and how they live. :)
In the meantime, I leave you with a link to one of Michele Theberge's  post about yet another myth: The Starving Artist Myth.

Write on! ^_^