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Art, artist, essay, hope, how to, inspiration, journey, magic, manifest, manifeststation, school, search, secret, trip, write, writer, writing
For hours I read the descriptions for writing classes. I look at UCLA Extension classes. I look at Gotham Writing Workshop. I look at the offerings of the non-profit writing organization in my city. I spend hours searching for online writing classes and writing groups in my area. I attend as many writing workshops as I can afford. I am searching. I am looking for discipline. I am looking for a magic pill or bullet that will keep me in my chair every day writing essays, prose poems, blog posts, articles. There must be a trick to being productive. It doesn’t help that on Facebook I am friends with a wide network of writers. Those writers report their daily word count: 2500, 3000, sometimes more. I feel inadequate. I feel like a failure. I hire a writing coach.
I have to accept that I am looking for shortcuts. I am looking for a guru with the answers to being a writer, but no such guru exists. The only true guru would tell me this one word, “write.” That’s it. I realize today as I am typing this that my problem is not that I need one more class, another critique, the input of one more teacher, assignments, encouragement, one more syllabus, or to participate in another workshop.
I need to sit down and do the work. I need to open a document and begin to type. I have been looking for something magical or mystical, some easy way out. There is no easy way out. It is just me, my thoughts, my hopes, my dreams, my words on a page that I either send into the world, or I don’t.
The time of reckoning is here: I either want to be a writer or I don’t. I either take this lonely step, or I give it up altogether. I think of all the money I have spent on advice. I think of all the time I have spent in classes. I think of how I was searching for someone to do the work for me. It doesn’t work that way. I need the determination. I need the motivation. I need to sit down and get down to business, the business of putting words on a page.
I have always believed that everyone has a book inside of them. I frequently meet people who tell me they are going to write theirs. I wish them well, I do, but this business of putting ideas on the page every day is not for everyone. It is both a pleasure and hard work. The words don’t always flow. The ideas don’t always make sense when you try to type them out. Not every piece is artistic or amazing.
I lost the ability to write for many years because I couldn’t focus while on my medication. I never want to lose that ability again. I don’t take this gift of time and the gift of desire for granted, but I have been looking for shortcuts and the path that has already been cleared for a few years now. It’s time to take out my machete, and start hacking away at the obstacles. No one can do it for me. I’m out in the jungle and the options are, move forward or stand still and perish without water.
I sat in my chair today, and I wrote. I wrote these words. I cleared the path a little bit. I took a step forward. Tomorrow, I hope I can make a little more progress, and after that, a few steps into the jungle each day.
It is work this writing, and although it is the best life I can imagine, I need to stop searching. If you want to write a book or make a living as a writer, you can pack your bags and begin to search for the best way to do that. But when you return home, you will find your computer waiting, and if you are lucky, there will be a sticky note on it that says that one word, “write.” And you will discover that you already had everything you needed before you left on your journey. That’s it. That’s all there is to it, “write.”
It’s so much harder than it sounds, you’ll break a sweat again and again, but that’s the secret, and it’s up to you to somehow find a way to turn it into magic one word at a time.
I just gave myself a similar pep talk this afternoon. I was listening to the audiobook, Grit, and wondering why I can never muster enough discipline to consistently write my memoir. I have three books in me but this first is the hardest, both because it’s my first (second if you count the the extremely amateurish rough draft stashed in a drawer more than twenty years ago), but also because the content of this first one scares me so much, and getting wrong scares me so much. And like you I’ve taken courses and workshops. I’ve read every writing book there is, looking for those magical words that glue my butt to the chair. They’re not there. BUT, I do believe in a support system made up of writers. I have one, though I don’t use it enough. And like you say, eventually we’re alone with our banking cursors. But I also realized today that I create better when I write in longhand first. So maybe it’s true for you. A fresh legal pad in a quiet library setting or coffee house is he perfect place for me to create without feeling so alone, and without the clinical feel of keys on a keyboard. Anything I’ve ever had published was handwritten first. Maybe we connect more with the writing when we write in longhand. It’s raw and fluid. And maybe the freedom to write anywhere, to stick to any chair, makes discipline less elusive. I sure hope so. I’m not getting any younger.
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I like to take my notebook and go to a coffee shop, too. Hopefully, we can both be really productive this fall!
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omigod, each and every word resonates with me. i feel like i’m reading my own life; my own dilemmas; my own thoughts.
i, too, have been on a journey and have spent countless times googling stuff about how to write better and nothing really stuck. just last week, i promised myself to make the effort of churning out at least 3 blog posts in a week. never happened. in my defense, i did try. but nothing was coming out. if there was a bit squeezed painfully out of me, i felt like it wasn’t good enough. and so i write and delete. write and delete. and then wonder if i should just give up this writing thing altogether as if it’s making me rich anyway.
but for what it’s worth, i do enjoy writing. if i didn’t, i wouldn’t have been able to maintain my blog (plus my journals) for years and years. it’s just that as much as it makes me happy and fulfilled, it can also be a pain in the ass.
mainly because i am my own critic. and for somebody who only does it for fun, i have fucking high standards! lol.
one time, i joined a writing workshop expecting to learn something technical. i guess a part of me was also kind of hoping that at the end of it, i would somehow come out a better writer.
wrong.
if anything, i realized that workshops are not for me. because i feel like writing is such a solitary thing to do. and because this comment is getting too long now like it’s already a blog post in itself, allow me to share with you my realizations which i wrote on my blog anyway. hehe.
https://thepausesbetween.com/2015/07/06/the-one-place-my-spirit-always-goes-to-when-my-body-is-asleep-what-i-wrote-about-at-the-creative-writing-workshop/
okay, i’m out. sorry for yakking. hehe.
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I loved your story from your workshop – thanks for linking to it. I’m glad you could relate to my post today. I need to buckle down and have a productive Fall. Maybe we will all have a productive Fall!
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cheers to that! =)
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We can check in and make sure we are each on track! 🙂
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yep, yep. see you around wordpress! =)
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Rebecca – Amen!
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So true! And a lot easier said than done… Keep going! 😉
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Thank you!
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I’m so glad you are a writer and love to read what you write. Please keep sitting down and doing the work you do.
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Thank you! xoxox
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