There are things that will hold you back from writing.
But almost every one of those things is a manifestation of you.
Surprised? I’m afraid it’s all too true. When it comes to not writing, you’re to blame.
But don’t be too hard on yourself, you likely didn’t know.
I use lots of tools when I write, though some of them aren’t recognized readily as such.
Many of my contemporaries use Scrivener, and yes, I have a copy of it. But what it does seems to me to be what I already do in my head. And in order to do that it seems to make more work for me in advance.
I know they’re going to argue with me, so I’m just putting up a virtual hand now and telling them I’m happy that it helps them. I am always in favour of anything that helps people get the job done.
I use a word processor. That’s probably my number one tool. It isn’t Scrivener, it isn’t even Word.
Mine are the best.
I’m not bragging, they just are.
Okay, I’m bragging a little … a lot? Maybe.
We do find reasons not to write “today” or “right now” and we tell ourselves those reasons are valid. And if they aren’t, well, they’re one offs, they won’t happen again. Or if they do we’ll know better than to use them next time, we’ll think up other excuses instead.
That, is the understatement of the century.
And it applies to almost everything.
But what I’m talking about is writing.
And I guess the other thing I’m talking about is a rather common topic for me … “Why aren’t you writing?”
Think about the people you know.
Think about the ones you like. Think especially about the ones you like whom you might not think you would be so fond of if you read about them in a book.
There are people in this world that you might not agree with, might not even approve of, but you find yourself liking them in spite of yourself.
The odds are that you can’t put your finger on the answer. One of my favourite people was also a Read more
I dare you to be adventurous.
And I don’t believe you can’t be.
If you’re a writer, a fiction writer, and you claim you’re not adventurous, you’re probably not telling the truth … to yourself.
Being adventurous is a two part thing. The first part is having an imagination. The second part is acting on it.
Being a writer, of course is a completely different thing. Yes, of course you have to have an imagination. But you don’t have to act on it, your characters do.
And when they do that, when they act on your imaginings, you live through what they live through as you write about them.
I write a lot. I write a lot of words and they end up in a lot of places.
A lot of what I write ends up online, easily half of it. And the stuff that doesn’t? Well, it ends up in files on my computer.
Of course I hope to those other words published some day.
But even if that never happens, I still have to write.
“Nothing happens in my life worth writing about.” “I can’t write.” “I don’t have an imagination.”These are excuses I hear all too often.
And the painful thing of it is that it shows, not that people don’t lead exciting lives, but that people don’t write because they don’t know how this works.
And I, poor excuse for a teacher that I am, intend to set this wrong to rights.