Taking risks

I have been reading a bit again lately. I have made time to get back to this thing that I so enjoy doing. My choices for books are always fiction and usually some homicide detective or private investigator story with a mystery attached. I am big on characters and they have to be real and with lots of interest and movement. But they don’t always need to be murder mysteries and I am pretty open to all kinds of suggestions made by other reader friends of mine.
I have read some books that I never would have thought to pick up much less read if it hadn’t been for some of the suggestions from friends. I am glad they give me authors and titles, sometimes leaving books on my desk or shipping them to me. Isn’t that great? I couldn’t ask for more.
I am currently reading my way through another series of books but I snuck a different one in between that a friend at work thought I might find interesting. It isn’t fiction but more of an informative type of book. It is called Failing Forward by John C. Maxwell, an author, speaker and leadership expert. It is about turning mistakes into stepping stones for success, as the front of the book says. The book goes through 15 different things you need to understand in order to change your attitude about failure and getting past it.
It was an interesting book explaining how you have to take action with the things you want to do. Some things I already knew but as always the reassurance from an expert is always good to hear.
I came across a line three quarters into the book that made me stop and smile. It was in a section called, Traps that make people back away from risk, #6 – The Inspiration Trap.
It said, “Many people want to wait for inspiration before they are willing to step out and take a risk…But as playwright Oscar Wilde said, when he was asked the difference between a professional writer and an amateur; the difference is that an amateur writes when he feels like it; a professional writes regardless.”
It made me smile. Don’t think for a moment that I think I am anywhere near being a professional writer, but I have been consistently writing regardless. I don’t always feel like it, I am not always inspired, but I do it everyday even if it’s a minimal amount of words. I could point out thoroughly uninspired pieces by the dozens that I have written that are loaded with mistakes. This piece here isn’t particularly inspired, but only my written thought, that I went ahead and spent free time on, not thinking of the outcome, yet staying true to my own form of discipline. I have learned more from making my mistakes everyday than I ever could if I wrote only when I felt like it.
It’s kind of nice to know I didn’t fall into that trap. I guess that is what made me smile.
TT