One of the pitfalls of the digital age is our oft-gratified thirst for instant results. I coach writers in various arenas, and over the past several years, I’ve noticed an increased sense that people believe they need to find out “the right answer” and hurry up and apply it, as if true and authentic writing is something for which we can look up instructions in WikiHow.
Any great creator will reflect some sense of the Pablo Picasso sentiment, “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” With writing, it is no different. While grammatical know-how, and a clear understanding of effective communication in your chosen field (screenwriting, marketing, blogging, fiction, journalism, instructions, informative writing, etc.), are crucial to success, they should be used in tandem with digging within oneself for the truth of what you want to express.
Before you start to write, get yourself in a clear place where you can hear your own thoughts. If anything is troubling you so much that you can’t proceed without feeling distracted, stop. Do something to clear your head first. You will never feel satisfied with your writing if it isn’t coming from a clear place within you. Digging deep is not something you can phone in.
That might sound very simple, but you have to be vigilant, well past those first glorious moments of inspiration. Every time you get lazy and write from an unclear place, you reinforce bad habits.
Consider these points before you write:
1) From whence do thoughts bubble up within you? Does it feel like a vast, mysterious place, ripe for exploring? It should.
2) Do you love words themselves? Do you take delight in finding options for how to express things in words? Do you love the feeling of “knowing” when you’ve hit upon something deeply true? You should.
3) Underneath the puzzle of putting a sentence or paragraph together, do you sense the joy of a thought finding concrete form? You should.
If you are not in the mood to experience these 3 things in your writing process, it is not a good time to write. You would be writing from a place outside your deepest self, and you wouldn’t feel satisfied with what came, no matter how many times you edited and tweaked it.
In fact, I would be so bold as to to say, if you have anything that you’ve written outside your deepest self, you should throw it away and start over. It’s much harder to push concrete words on a screen/page to a deeper place, than it is to go first to that deeper place and then find new words.
Warning to the faint of heart:
If you want to avoid loneliness or the confrontation of negative emotion of any kind, I would ask yourself gently whether you really want to be a writer. To write well, you have to be willing to go wherever your thoughts take you. If any thought-paths are off-limits to you, your writing won’t be truly honest.
Don’t blame your writing issues on life. Life is meant to be lived, and writing is a safe place to process it. If writing doesn’t feel safe to you, you will never go where you need to go with it. Find your way of getting into a groove, or else deal with outside insecurities first.
There’s no point in writing anything that isn’t at least an attempt at conveying something as true to your own unique, inner thought as you possibly can. If you can’t get 100% behind what you are saying, why are you trying to say it? Say what you really mean, and your writing will have worth to you and to the world.
Further reading:
Below are four of my favorite resources for writing inspiration.
The Art of Fiction by Ayn Rand
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
Was this helpful to you? Please feel free to share in the comments. I hope you find the guidance you need to begin to express the truest version of your writer’s voice!
