Writers Write

Writers write. We write because we like it. We write because we have something to say. We write to express beauty, pain, fear, anxiety, frustration, confusion, emotion. 

We write as an extension or a condition of our being alive.

It is really as simple and as complicated as that.

Why then do we sit around and say we are not writers, until our names are on by lines or massive six figure contracts, until other people say it about us?

What have we been waiting for? What then have we considered ourselves to be all of this time?

This is why yesterday I typed that line about writing being art or writers being artists however I worded it.

Maybe the words writer or author are too specific. Is a doodler an artist? 

If we never finish a work, be it a poem or a paragraph, much less a short story or a novel, can we call ourselves accomplished at anything related to writing?

These questions are semi rhetorical. I present them to you because when we confront ourselves with new questions new thoughts arrive.

Today’s tip for great writers is one word: PRACTICE.

Not just because doing something right over and over again leads to perfection in an area.

Rather simply because writers, write.

If all you are doing is thinking about it or planning to, you are not writing. 

This is not about word counts or some number.

This is about that cramp in your fingers as your head is full of stuff that you are churning out as fast as you can.

It is about writing something, that when you read it over it makes you catch your breath anew, like you have never seen it before. 

This is about the ease and the flow that comes on us writers sometimes. It is about building a familiarity with the craft. 

There are those things we do regularly, so often that we can take them for granted. Yet on certain days, at certain times, there seems to come a hum or silver lining over and through them.

We want to add writing to the list of those things. It should not just be for special occasions or emergencies.

There should be an ease about our writing that comes with regularity.

Does this include a ritual for you? 

Do you roll up your sleeves, sit in the special room in the certain chair? 

Is it about getting away and out of the house?

To the porch or in the attic? Do you have a nook? 

Is it after midnight when you muse and release?

Writers write, they practice the craft, they keep note books and pads of paper handy. They jot down ideas.

A fellow blogger mentioned she has documents full of fluff and filler writing that got edited off and out of posts which made it onto her live blog. 

Right!?

I thought everybody did that. I know I do. I reason; film makers cut film.

Actors are well aware that their best scenes, sometimes the only scene they are in could end up on the cutting room floor.

Writing is art. Art is messy. Artists create in the excess.

What would you see if you went to a bakery and looked in the back of the shop? 

If you go to a place where they make pottery will you see wet clay chunks and random muck?

For every finished product there is the left over, the mess, and usually a few extra things that were not that product, laying around.

Can you look at your life and say, 

"Yes, I practice writing. There are bits and pieces of things I was thinking and imagining in print somewhere around my space.” ?