The Desire to Write

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I have had good storytellers, great conversationalists and naturally funny people tell me that they could never be a writer.  “And, why is that?” I ask.

“I'm not good enough,” is the usual answer.

“Good enough for what?” I ask.

“Well, you know, good enough to be published,” is the answer.

It is in our collective consciousness that to be a “real writer” your work has to be published.  It’s funny when you think about it.  You can be a skier without being in the Olympics.  You can be a biker without being in the Tour de France.  So being a writer means that you write.

We also get tangled up in the idea of making money.  Most of us have to support ourselves.  That we may not do so from writing does not lessen the fact that we are writers.  Read Stephen King’s book On Writing and learn about the awful jobs he had before his writing started supporting him.

In The Right to Write (Tarcher-Putnam; 1998) Julia Cameron says that would be writers are seized by anxiety because of the emphasis on the product and not the process.  The idea that one should start out writing perfect prose is paralyzing.  It does not have to be that way.  

For writing to be organic, the idea of practicing the craft that you love replaces the desire for perfection and publishing.  There is nothing wrong with wanting to be published, but first we need to practice the art.  A pianist does not go from playing two-fingered “Chopsticks” one day to Carnegie Hall the next.

Let’s say that you have an idea of a story that you want to write.  Just sit down and start.  Give yourself permission to write junk, anything that comes to your mind and silence that critic that lives in your head.  Don’t worry about grammar or sentence structure at this point.  Keep writing until you get your idea on paper.

Do not edit as you go. Nothing kills good ideas like editing too early and too much.  Do not even edit when you finish writing.  Put your story away for a day at least.  When you go back to the piece, read it aloud before you change a thing.  If an idea pops into your mind while you are reading, just jot a word or two on a separate piece of paper. You don’t want to lose the idea but don’t edit either.

After the first reading, read it again.  This time listen for the flow of the words.  Does something sound like a sour note?  Do you use the same word over and over?  Does it sound like you wrote it?  It should – it should not sound like William F. Buckley wrote it.  How about the main thought or the point of the story; if someone else reads it, will they understand or “get” it?

We can “think” a story to death before we ever get it on paper.  We worry about getting it right.  You get it right when it rings true.  It will ring like a bell when you write what you think instead of thinking what to write.

Some very famous writers say that writing is agony.  Maybe they shouldn’t be writing.  Perhaps they just want to keep the mystique in place.  Writing may not be “easy.”  Few things are.  If you have the desire to write, don’t let anyone throw up roadblocks.