I was young, I don’t remember what age exactly but young, maybe 6 or 8 or 13. My parents would take us to church and I would hear all these things about God and Heaven, and I questioned it. I didn’t believe half the stories, I thought no way. So I asked my father one day about living and doing good, and what is the truth, or something along those lines.

I remember his face, it was gentle and scruffy and he kind of squinted, wrinkled his nose and looked up at the sky, and then at me and smiled. He said, “Well Corrie, you don’t live for the world, you just live in it and you do what you can, be honest to your heart.”

Lately this memory or saying has been going through my head, non stop, as if it’s on some kind of loop. Why??

So I thought I would write about it. However… I’m not sure what “it” is. Am I searching for something, am I not following my heart? Theses are the questions that fill up the blind space, where do I go from here.

You know that poem, “The Road Less Traveled”, Am I at that fork? What’s stalling me to walk the path I have chosen? Awe, right. The fear…..

I have been accepted into an MFA creative writing program. I’ve started my first quarter, and I am scared shitless. Do I know what I am doing? NO!! Well maybe, but I’m stalling. Slowly sliding my feet across the hot pavement. Maybe if I write about what I am afraid of, I can get over it and move forward.

Well of course, the all well-known fear, what the F*** do you want?

I have this image of me wearing amor, and I’m not standing alone. The best of the best–Faulkner, Doctorow, Chandler, Patterson, Hemingway, and more–have been right where I am now. I am not saying I’m any Doctorow or Patterson either, but I strive for it. I gotta let the fear go. Simple, Yay right. But it should be just simple. I have been reading many new and old authors lately and I can’t remember which one said it, but she/he said, “You have to write about your fears, your likes, your loses, your loves, your darkest dream.”

So this is where I begin.

I am scared to write because I’m afraid I am not at a graduate level, and I will be laughed at and fail miserably. I am scared to death to write a critical essay, It has been so long. There I said it. Now what? I guess, now I write.