The photo above is of a greeting card that I read almost every day. I'm still relatively young (26) but I have a tough time not comparing myself to people who are younger than me and published or have written way more books. I start thinking "Why did it take you so long to get serious about writing? If you'd started in college you could have 8 finished books by now! Why did you waste three years in law school? Why did you watch Jersey Shore last night instead of writing ten more pages? Why aren't you working harder? Why aren't you working faster? There's no time to stop and smell the roses! At this rate, you'll never be successful!"
And then I take a deep breath.
And I remind myself, that it's never too late. That although it took me a while to get serious about writing, I'm glad I made the decision when I did, as opposed to ten or twenty years later. That even though I wasn't writing novels in college, I was having experiences that provided me with tons of material. That if I hadn't gone to law school, I might have never gotten so fed up with white-collar formality that I *needed* to write a novel before my head exploded. That I watched Jersey Shore last night because I needed to unwind and take a break from reality. That I'm already working very hard, and if I crank things up much more, other areas of my life will start to suffer. That inspiration will come when it's ready, and my writing pace is naturally going to vary. That I *have* to stop and smell the roses sometimes, and that someday I will achieve the writing success I dream of.
Sure, if I'd known that I wanted to be a writer when I was 15, I'd have a lot more finished books under my belt today. But they probably would have been crap, because I had a much more limited world view back then. All the time that I wasn't seriously writing (I say seriously writing because I was always writing - stories, notes, poetry, ideas - but not with the idea that anyone else would read them), I was having new experiences and I was reading voraciously, mostly YA. I was studying my craft. And I was figuring out what was missing in the market that I wanted to see on shelves. So the time wasn't wasted, it was building up to where I am today. And now I'm here, at the point that writing is like breathing, and I'm doing everything I can to see my work in print someday. It's the right place at the right time and it isn't too late. Because it's never too late.
