Writers Write, Writers Risk
Tim has a great quote sitting on top of his desk: “Do one thing every day that scares you.” Reviewing my blog, there are two inescapable ways I am failing to do this:
1) I don’t write enough. I don’t write every day. Or every other day. Tucker was telling me how sometimes what I write is good, but that he didn’t understand why it takes me a week or two to get it on the page. Then he said not to answer, because there isn’t a correct one. “Writing every day, or at least 5 times a week, can only help you. Anything you’d say to invalidate that is wrong.”
2) I don’t risk enough. There aren’t a lot of entries I have written that are unique to me, that in some sense couldn’t have been written by anybody else. I don’t really have my own voice yet. Part of this is a consequence of #1, but is also a sign that I’m not taking enough risks. This may sound weird, but I think if my writing is to reflect me, it needs to be wrong more. And while I believe in myself and in the long view of things, that optimism shouldn’t bias the short. Sometimes you fail big to learn a small lesson. Sometimes you don’t learn at all. Write it that way.
So I don’t have much else to say on this. It’s glaringly obvious: If I’m not updating my blog more, taking risks more–way more–how will I ever call myself a writer? Why would I call this blog Turning Pro? What authority do I have? Who would listen to my advice?
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Here’s the other thing: You’ve danced around this same conclusion for a solid 2 or 3 months now. It’s definitely great to think self-reflectively and analyze why and how you might be acting a certain way. Still, if you don’t do something about it its sort of masturbatory.
The quest to self actualization is a lonely one.
“The greatest thing about tomorrow is, I will be better than I am today. And that’s how I look at my life. I will be better as a golfer, I will be better as a person, I will be better as a father, I will be a better husband, I will be better as a friend. That’s the beauty of tomorrow. There is no such thing as a setback. The lessons I learn today I will apply tomorrow, and I will be better.” – Tiger Woods
- This is my new motto for 2009 by the way. Steal it if you like, and keep working.
Keep writing. Don’t worry about turning professional. All of the immortals labored their entire lives, perhaps on a single work. None of them were professionals. The professionals are forgotten about, because they produce trite professional rubbish that is mired in the conventions of the day. Write because you enjoy writing, and you will write – everyday. Please take a look at my blog, and my novel Broken Under Interrogation. I wish you the best. I see that your blog has not been updated for quite a while. I hope you are alive and well.
Jeffrey M. Hopkins
I stumbled onto this blog because I had just googled the query “I don’t write enough”, because I’m working on the same dilemma you are, Ian. Whenever someone asks me what I love the most, where my passion lies, or what I’m the best at doing, I always say that, for me, It’s All About Writing. And yet I can’t seem to devote myself to the craft. Whenever I sit down with my laptop or journal, I wind up feeling defeated, like I can’t think about anything other than the immediate, totally subjective concerns of my personal life. It’s not that I’m afraid or I can’t write, I just can’t seem to THINK, or to conjur up anything beyond the expression my immediate emotions, which results in nothing but journal entries and maybe a decent poem. This is bad for someone who wants to get published, and to publish actual books, actual NOVELS. Whenever I endeavor to write something substantial, I begin by TRYING to think back through the last several days so as to recapture bygone moments of mental clarity and the penetrating social insights that I vaguely remember having experienced. But alas, the effort usually turns up nothing but the tickle of brilliance on the “tip of my tongue” which just serves to tease me. This sort of dilemma is very discouraging, because it causes me to doubt whether the one activity I claim as my favorite and that I dream about the most is, in-fact, something I can turn into a lucrative career– (I mean, I identify myself–from the soul upward–as someone who was born to create written art!)–especially when I have met other writers my age who churn out tons more material (and good stuff, too). They just seem to “have it all together”, like the act of writing comes so easy to them and that they are always paying attention and wistfully recording and capturing all their brilliance and then channeling it effortlessly into countless short stories, screenplays, and novels. The only thing I can manage are poems, and that’s just because they are short and highly concentrated. In other words, they burn like short, bright candles because they require less work than a novel and, unlike any novel, offer instant gratification as a result.
Maybe you and I, Ian (that is, if what I’ve said really makes sense to you) should start by: 1.) taking the extra step of carrying a notepad around with us and writing down those fleeting moments of philosophical brilliance and pointed insightfulness, and 2.) take the easy step of writing about one topic each night, and turning that topic into a short story. I would start with short stories, so as not to overexert, and then revist the best shorts (after getting a dozen or so completed) and begin expanding them into longer versions of themselves. The idea is to take advantage to all the brilliant material in a small, dense story, and STRETCH (with much less focus on adding material) it, increasing its surface area, but not adding to its volume, necessarily. I think we tend to devaluate our ideas, or just fail to record them, and then get frustrated when the ideas that pop up when we rack our brains at the keyboard are less-than-satisfying. We need to record novel-worthy material, “spit it out” in the form of a a dense, but golden, short story, and then expand that same story into a larger version of itself. This would allow that novel itself to be “the easy part” and not so damn daunting.
I’m going to try this approach to writing and see if it doesn’t help boost my confidence. As you can tell, I’m no penman sage, but I’d personally recommend you give this approach a shot, from the sympathy of a someone who understands how “writer’s block” is not just a temporary barrier, but a serious and chronic dilemma.
Cheers,
Justin
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