When you’re writing your heart out, hammering the keyboard at every spare moment to turn out the stories you hope will one day be published… when you’re studying the markets, reading the back issues, sending for guidelines and scouring the web… when you’re doing all these things, sometimes it’s easy to get lost in the mire.
It’s easy to forget why you started writing in the first place.
What was it that first inspired you to sit down and write about non-existent people, often in non-existent places, doing imaginary things and getting into pretend danger?
Was it a dream of fame and fortune? That one day you’d be up there in the bestsellers lists with people camping overnight outside the shop when your next book was launched?
Did you see yourself being interviewed on TV, with viewers hanging on your every word and wannabe writers listening intently for the one nugget of wisdom that would set them on their own path to fortune?
Or was it, as it is for most of us, more down to earth and humble?
A simple love of storytelling and the reading of a good story. The joy of watching words appear on the screen as your fingers fly, the sheer satisfaction of crafting a piece of make-believe that readers will weep over, laugh through, and carry with them in their minds for a while.
Most of us start writing just because we love to do it. Many of us don’t even consider that we’ve got something important to say. We just want to tell a story, and tell it well.
We start out by writing what we love. We don’t pay too much attention to what we’re going to do with it once it’s written. The writing is enough.
Then somewhere along the line, the magic starts to become the master. “Have you tried to get this published,”? someone might ask.
And you’re suddenly on the treadmill.
Writing now becomes work, rife with disappointment and rejection. Friends love your stories but publishers hate them. You can’t break in.
So it starts.
You read back issues, you study the market, you send for guidelines. You write some more. You think, this doesn’t work so maybe if I do it like this it will be better. You change your style, you question your subject, your genre, your very ability.
What once brought joy now brings tears and frustration. Maybe, you think, you can’t write at all. Maybe you should just give it up.
But… maybe, just maybe, you need to take a step back and write again just for the love it.
Forget what the others are writing and publishing. You are you, so write it your way. Write it like you did at the beginning when it was just for fun and just because you loved to do it.
Never let the business of writing spoil the joy of writing.
Because if you do, you’ll stop writing. Putting words on the page will become an exercise in self-abuse. You’ll beat yourself up over every long paragraph and every split-infinitive. You’ll reject every idea because you think there will always be a better one hidden deeper in your imagination if only you can dig far enough.
There might be, but today’s idea is good too so fly with it.
Write what you love. Write because you want to. Write the way you wrote when you first decided that writing was cool, and first realised what a kick you got out of it.
Write from the heart, like you used to.
Related posts:
hi i’m so glad I FOUND THIS SITE, I LOVE TO WRITE ON CM POETRY, BUT DON’T HAVE ANY FORMAL TRAINING, THIS LOOKS LIKE A LOT OF FUN. THANK YOU CHERYL