Ability and Desire

      If Ability is made manifest by success, then Desire is ability's shadow.

      Desire raises the heart, releases dreams and confounds expectations. The writing of dreams takes aptitude. Naturally held or scholastically acquired talent is required to transit an idea, in completion, to page.  Desire's capacity can only take you so far...

     This is what hangs in eternal doubt for a would be storyteller. You have a thought. It flashes on and off in your mind. Clear character profiles or minds-eye misted castles... You feel they are there... sometimes. Playing scenes in your head, some making you smile, others creating passion or anger by extension. Then you put it aside...Life comes first, right?

     Still, the yearning builds to write it all down, but you don't... Not yet.
Maybe it's because you don't want to explain to someone what you are doing, avoid ridicule or doubting looks of the people around you. What if they laughed or smirked? They don't think you can do it. What if they are right? Your career in school wasn't marked by literary accolades. Remember those C- papers in English Comp 102? That English professor definitely rolled his eyes when you were reading aloud your essay on "Why the 60's Lost Me". It had nothing to do with what you thought In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida really meant, denying the mondegreen legend.

    Whether weeks, months or years... Time goes on and by. Then something happens: Job dis-satisfaction, divorce, boredom... or maybe you just have a catharsis/epiphany. Fewer people notice the times you aren't around or the lock on your home office gets fixed. It's a Saturday and the air is unusually crisp or stars align. You open a word file and...

    You idiot! You hit the desire switch. QUICK! Gather your abilities. It's a race against time, for the love of God. Keep the smile balanced with that furrowed brow. When you take a break to refill that coffee cup, keep the knowing smile to a minimum. Don't kiss the dog and throw the ball for your spouse... Be cool...
Faster than normal steps mark the approach to your computer. Has that desk light always been this bright?

    Then it grows. Pages turn into chapters. You read writing blogs and see that there are things like genre, query letters, social networking and your story is now a m-a-n-u-s-c-r-i-p-t. Head down, you grow the MS into a living entity. Living, because it is filled now with emotion, despair, humor and it throws tantrums, not allowing you to add to it till it's ready...bitch.

    Taking the day off, you look back over the fertile fields that are now your lengthy tomb. Internally proud that you have 387,057 words... Isn't Word Count great? Wait till your friends see how thick your book is! Really, really thick. So you learn the "E" word and take lessons in intellectual wrestling. You sculpt your MS into a novel trilogy, write the ultimate query letter inspired by a Shark, and tussle over which of two agents you should sign with: the one that likes Orange or the one that likes Orange Soda... You flip a coin, then sign with someone else.

   Where did it all come from? Hint: You always had it in you.

   Ability

   It took desire to bring it out, but your aptitude was aways there. Desire is the shadow of ability. Desire to write can't be taught. It had to be there, in a sustained coma after LIFE hit you in the head. The light of hidden ability brought it out again. The silhouette of the desire to write, now stands next to your ability competently convey.

   Whether you know it or not, at this point in all of this, is the real epiphany.