Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Just Write!

Writers are whiners. What legendary writer-tales are made of is the pain of writing…the pain of paralysis of the brain and will power.

The way us writers complain about writing, you’d think, we are doing heavier work than carrying truckloads of material on our backs up a steep ladder on top of roofs or high rise buildings. Writing is easy on the body, people,,,why the complaint?

All we do is sit at a chair to nurture our bottoms and let the fingers do the talking to the keyboard or the pen, pencil, and paper. So why the whining, which sometimes leads to wining…or drenching our nervous systems with caffeine or anything liquid?

The problem is writers try to write the great American, English, British, Aussie novel or some other award winning work. Nothing is wrong in aiming for the stars as long as we own a spaceship. Even spaceships are not built in a day.

Then we expect the muse, someone outside of ourselves, to hand it to us on a silver platter or even a paper plate. You wish! But it does not happen like that, even if we coerce ourselves to believe it.

So why don’t we just enjoy the act of writing instead of focusing on the project’s result?

When we stop concentrating on good-writing and just enjoy the act of writing, the writing becomes better, not perfect but better. Then we can always polish off or leave it alone. At least, we end up with the fun of it all.

When Wannabe started her everyday writing challenge and I started writing regularly within her group, I wanted to write short stories only. Well, it didn’t happen. I did write a few short story-like pieces, but everything about them sucked. You don't write a story just by sitting down with it, although those pieces have the potential to be fixed if I feel like it... or not.

After that, I started to write freely, just anything, like what I am doing now, and the thing flowed, because we had to fill a certain word count everyday.

When Wannabe's challenge was over, I kept up with a very lax writing schedule and formed a group around just writing, "Invalid Item" . It is fun and once you get the hang of it; you think on paper or the screen; and you want to write anything, everywhere, and anywhere.

So, if you are having trouble, just start writing. It doesn’t have to make sense at first or at all. Write from a prompt, a thought, jump between thoughts and prompts, or just describe something. Or write any word that comes to your mind. Just write.

The fun is worth it.