Rewrite, Take #357...

Have you ever rewritten a story, edited it back to front, cut and pasted it till your heart bled, shifted and rearranged everything, only to go back to the very beginning you deleted and work with what you started with? Well, this is where I am in my story writing process at the moment. And, I have to say, it is frustrating as Hell, as all get out! I don't remember it being so hard... At present I am trying to write something for a friend but I am having a very hard time getting anywhere with the story. I feel as if the more I write the farther away I'm getting to the story. Maybe, because it's her story. I suppose that if it were mine I would be more invested in it, I would feel it more. A frightening thought just occurred to me, what if I'm not supposed to be a writer? What if all I am is a person who writes, never getting published? What if that is all I get in life? Would that suffice for me? Is it okay to be a writer only for yourself? To write just for the sake of getting the words out? Would that do it as a life, as a writing life? The worst thing in the world to me is to want something I can't have, to spend my life chasing something I will never get. To me that's a wasted life but, of course, the paradox of that is that if I don't chase after something I will never know if I will get it or not. I really don't remember writing being so hard for me... I re,ember it coming with so much more fluidity than I'm experiencing now. It was almost effortless for me to write back in the day but, now, I find that I struggle more than I should... It's depleting my confidence daily, by every second of the day I feel myself loosing more and more of my ability to write and it fills me with a deathly dread that no corpse could recover or come back from. Maybe I waited too long... That seems to be the story of my life, the running theme through my existence: always late to the party and, never the first to leave. What if I can't write for someone else, what if I can only write for myself? Would that be so wrong? Is it a requirement for being a writer that I have to write for everybody else? I wish I had all the answers in this plight that I'm suffering through. But, until that day happens I guess I will have to be content with the questions, for they give me hope that all is not totally, and completely lost. May they never stop coming.