Means to an End

For a while now, I've been reading books on television writing.  Books on spec scripts, creating pilots, character development, etc. Yet every time I finish one of these books, I feel like I still need to read and learn more about writing, like I haven't yet figured out what I need to do or should be doing.

What I should be doing, if I want to be a writer, is write.  I shouldn't necessarily quit learning about the process, but I should quit only learning about the process, and not actually doing any of the process.  That's what I should be doing, if I want to be a writer.

There's an issue here, however.  I don't know that I want to be a writer.  I certainly don't feel like one.  I've been told by others that I should be a writer, or that I look like a writer (whatever that means!), but deep down inside, I don't really identify myself as a writer.

Really, I just see it as a means to an end.  I have this whiteboard full of ideas for creative projects.  Almost any idea could be developed into a film, a TV series, a novel, a comic strip or book, etc.  The problem is that they stay on that whiteboard and don't go anywhere.  Sometimes I try and develop an idea into something, such as Nut Jobs, a web comic about squirrels I created that has lasted all of six strips, and that hasn't been touched in over a year.  I created it because it was the only way that it was going to get made.  I don't consider myself an artist, and I'm pretty sure my high school and college art teachers would agree with this.  It's not my forte.

As for writing, it's not that I can't write per se, it's just that I feel like I have to follow a formula, and that I have to learn that formula, and do the process by following the steps.  It feels forced rather than desired, and that just seems wrong to me.  Maybe that's how it is for all writer's though.  Maybe it's like every other form of exercise, where you often dread doing it until you've done it, and then you realize how great it feels to have done it.  You can't wait to do it again tomorrow, even though you know that tomorrow you're going to dread doing it once again.

In a way, I'd love to just take that "Created by" title, and leave the "written by" title for those who actually want to be writers.  I just don't know if that's doable without having a few "written by"credits of my own though.

Do the means justify the end?