I've always wanted to write. I'm always grateful once I've done it. But when I sit down to do it, most of the time, it feels like work. I expect it to flow and it doesn't. I expect inspiration to come, and it won't. What I've put down doesn't seem to amount to much. Yet I want to be disciplined enough to still make myself do it. Less for the end product, and more because I want to grow into the writer I believe myself to be.
As I was reading, "Please Understand Me II: Temperament, Character, Intelligence, it had this to say: "Any skill is acquired by practice, increasing precisely in the degree it is exercised, and diminishing in the degree it is neglected." Writing is a skill, not a mystical experience. To improve in it, I must exercise it. "We improve in doing things we are interested in doing, and have greater interest in things we do well. Interest reinforces skill, skill reinforces interest, and neither seems to be the starting point."(Keirsey 125)
I am hoping that as I work at exercising and applying my writing skills, my skills will increase, and so will my interest in doing the work.
"Neural cells are like muscle cells; if they aren't used they lie dormant and even degenerate."(Keirsey 125)
What do you do, my writing friends, to keep those neural cells firing?
3 comments:
I needed to read this. It's past time that I schedule out my days with a specified time to just sit and write. Waiting for motivation isn't working. Rather than hope it finds me, I need to work to find it.
Julia, Thank you for this post. I find your writing fluent, captivating and inspiring. I also appreciate your dedication to truth-telling. I do hope you will continue to develop your writing. I see you as a writer who makes a difference - and I hope you will continue to write and publish. If you want to go in that direction, I can easily see writer/author as your primary profession/ministry. And writing truly is a ministry. William Zinsser (author of On Writing Well) has approached his whole writing career as a ministry, even though most of his writing is on "secular" topics, such as travel pieces for the Conde Nast publication. (I believe Zinsser is still alive, though he must be 90 by now.)
Have you read Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, Outliers? It is about what it takes to develop an interest into an expertise. People who are true masters at sports or computers or music or art or whatever it may be have generally had about 10,000 hours of practice of their craft.
Well, I certainly like to write but haven't embraced this as a life work, so I don't have a schedule or a regular practice. I have a sort of irregular practice. Sometimes, like you, I find writing to be hard work. Other times, I feel excited about what I want to write, so I find writing to be work but more enjoyable.
I will say this. The more truthful I am in my writing, the more enjoyable it is.
Keep writing!
I let myself play with language. It's much more intimidating than tackling books (the books are the lovely by product. ;)
Also, I read tons. Reading is not passive and is a great way to absorb craft.
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