Resume filler and the written word

When you are shopping yourself for a job you want to stand out just enough to catch someone’s attention. On paper I am kind of boring so I needed something to promote myself. Not to mention I am not that exciting in real life. I never really had any hobbies or pursuits, the ones I do have are a recent development. I have done a fair amount of volunteer work off and on through the years, never anything special. So under other interests or hobbies I would put down that I was working on my novel.

I never really had a novel. If an interviewer ever asked me about it I had a good enough cover story for an answer. I would always get asked about my novel. I would state that it was a hobby and that I was not interested in getting published, it was writing just for the sake of writing.

I actually have written bits and pieces of stuff related to a novel that I have scrapped. I do have a title, the barest outline of a plot, and a couple of characters to populate it. I think I have a great opening line. I just never really seriously went anywhere with it. Every so often I revisit it and think about taking a more serious stab at it.

The reason why I never really went much further is that I tend to be overly critical of my own work. When taking university courses and writing term papers I would tend to re-write those assignments anywhere from five to seven times. Then I would give up and submit them with never being really satisfied with the end result. It is the same thing with whatever I write on a personal level. After writing anything and then reading back through I never feel that what I wrote looks "right". If I was a bit smarter I never would have scrapped my previous personal efforts, I should have just set them aside and examined what worked and what did not. Then why it did not work. I recall reading something by Pierre Berton years ago once where he said a writer never throws away anything. Obviously I did not pay attention.