When you realize you're a baby

At one point in my life, someone thought I was a good writer. I can string together a sentence pretty well and can clearly state what I'm intending to get across. But I have spent so much of my life, more than two-thirds, NOT writing creatively. That's a very long time. So I find myself thinking that I'm starting over, like a baby. I've found some critiquing sites and put a few things I thought were decent up there. Be careful when asking for criticism, you actually will get it!! And it turns out, I am not very good. Well, that might not be entirely true. The idea of a first draft is to just get the words on the page, so a writer shouldn't expect it to be magical without revision. But there were WAY more negative comments than there were positive. When I think about it, I'm not surprised. I've had little to no practice in my craft, so I should have waited a looooong time before putting anything up on one of these sites. Actually, I'm now sure that it was the best thing I could have done. The reason being, now I can take the pressure off myself and just put my head down and keep writing. I've got several great writing books that I'm slowly working my way through, and I found a few awesome websites that have given me tons to think about. I'm also listening to podcasts and watching videos. Its what anyone who was taking on a new hobby would do. In fact, I know someone who just took up flying. Yup, this guy is over 50 and decided to become a pilot. He got himself a simulator and a bunch of books, he's taking lessons in person and going through classes online. He joined a community of people who fly and has even started making friends that are pilots (or pilots-to-be). So this is what I've decided to do. Treat my writing like a hobby. I thought I was ready to enter contests and think about the great idea for a novel. But that's putting the cart before the horse. I have to immerse myself in the craft and practice, practice, practice. So now I think of myself as a baby writer. I'm still a writer, but I'm not pretending to be better than I am or make grand proclamations that I'm writing the next bestseller. The biggest difference between where I am now and where I was when I graduated college with a creative writing degree? I'm not scared anymore. I used to be scared of failure. But now I realize that every great writer started out as a mediocre writer with a huge heap of potential. If I want to go anywhere with this, I'll have to crawl before I walk and running will come eventually.