Writing Against the Echoes

'How do you expect to become a writer when you don't know what a paragraph is?' These few words have sprawled before me like the scattered pages of an unwritten novel for years. The years wasted enduring the idea that I was a talentless imposter. How many novels did I not write? How many ideas did I send to an early grave, hundreds? Thousands? Could I have made it as a writer then, when I was at the ripe age of thirty-four before I listened to those words?