Hello. My name is Petra, and I am a people-pleaser.

Can you relate at all? Please say yes. Because I don't want to be in this boat alone. But the clincher is, I am also a perfectionist. These two traits are totally self-destructive when it comes to being a writer. Want to know how I know this? It took me all of thirty minutes to come up with the first five sentences of this blog when it should have taken me two!

I start things and then don't finish them because there is something that isn't "quite right." Then I go back and if there is something that might be just the least bit offensive I take it out. I am left with nothing. So what is my solution? Don't do anything. On my "writing" bookshelves I have countless projects I have begun - memoirs, stories, ideas, character profiles, and even a bit of poetry that sit gathering dust. My email inbox is overflowing with advice and wonderful how-to advice. Boy do I love reading those! I have my Pinterest board  "writing" full of articles I think I will get around to at some point and one board full of inspirational quotations.

Most of the writing advice is, "Sit and just write!" What a wonderful thought. I think I will ponder that for a while and let it REALLY sink in. While I do that I think I will flip the TV on and watch hours of mindless television. Or perhaps I will read. No, reading puts me in a mood to write because I start to think. And the ideas somehow get stuck in my head. I have read about the idea of "dumping." Have you? It is where you just sit with a pen and paper and just write EVERYTHING that comes into your head. Well, I just cannot bring myself to do that. My handwriting would be atrocious or it would have no order to it. Darn that perfectionism!

Let me further address the aspect of the people-pleasing side of me, since that is how I began this post. (See how I have to have everything just so even now?) I have a mind and a voice that is screaming in my head to be freed. But I am paralyzed because I fear that people will judge me for those thoughts and not like me anymore. So those ideas and opinions stay trapped in an endless cavern, eventually to die because of malnutrition. (Yes, I personify my ideas since they are so alive in this naggen of mine.)

So, maybe I am not cut out to be a writer.

Nah....my stubbornness takes over here and keeps me just frustrated enough early in the morning where I sit in front of a blank screen and force myself to write - even something horrible - so I can press the backspace key and make it blank again.

Hello, my name is Petra and I am a stubborn, perfectionist, people-pleaser. Enough about me....How are you? And tell me YOUR affliction in writing.