What's a Young Writer to Do?

Andrea’s blog about late-blooming aside, this young bud has been having difficulty so much as sprouting lately. Between recently reading an O. Henry prize winning story written by a young snot —er, fellow—born in 1983 (two years after I, but who’s counting?), and recently coming across this article in the New York Times all about how bleak the publishing industry looks for everyone except Tina Fey and, possibly, Ted Turner, putting pen to page (or fingers to keyboard, as the case may be), has been increasingly more difficult of late. It’s paralyzing, isn’t it? Those nagging voices asking who am I and what do I have to say, really?, and chanting no one reads anymore anyway. I’m not even thirty yet, and feel as though I’m already washed up, like the pinnacle of my writing career came in the seventh grade, when I won honorable mention in a school-wide poetry contest. But then I remember why I wrote all that god-awful poetry back in middle school. At the ripe old age of 12 or so, I was learning how to process the world and all of my emotional reactions to it, however melodramatic, through my writing. I still have every notebook I’ve ever done any writing in, and flipping through them reminds me: I’m not in this trade/craft/art called writing for the money. I’m in it for the good it does my heart and soul. Yes, a six-figure book deal would be nice, but even without one, I’m going to keep churning out words, whether anyone (besides my future self looking for inspiration, of course) reads them or not. So, what is a young writer to do? Keep writing, that’s what. And, of course, keep my day job too.