I think that the “just write” advice is both vague and reassuring. You have to star somewhere. I had a lot of writing dreams that forced themselves through me onto the paper. I kept writing and sharing them. This lead to a lot of projects and a lot of questions I asked people as I figured out what I wanted to get from writing. But writing forever without training and doing and expecting nothing else in order to gain mastery is foolishness. I totally agree.
Good luck on your continued writing journey! (I am wondering if turtle-rimmed glasses need to be my next eye wear purchase!)
I used to do SEO blog/content writing but it’s not quite what I have in mind when I think of a “writer” so I ditched the gig. I would love to write my own books soon!
Jerry Seinfeld was once asked by a fledgling comic, “What’s the one thing an up and coming comic could do to improve their chances of hitting it big like he did?”
The rookie was looking for the secret he could apply once and hit a home run with but he was in for an answer most people won’t like.
Jerry told the wanna-be to go to an office supply store and buy himself a calendar, one of those ones you can put on the wall and see every month and everyday of the year at a glance and a red marker.
He told him “The answer to your question, is to write everyday. Not every other day. Not once a week. EVERY DAY. After you’ve logged your writing for the day, you can face your calendar, marker in hand and put a fat red X through that day.”
He said “Don’t break the chain. Doing this got my routines razor sharp and kept my creativity flowing when I needed lots of it and this insured I was on fire when opportunity knocked at my door.”
I like this advice. To me it makes common sense. Of course, it helps to also fuse this with Stephen King’s advice to the same question from fledgling writers which in its most simplified form is, “Read a lot and write a lot.”
Where I think Jerry’s advice can fall flat or into a wall that leads a person to quit or whine, is if they aren’t loading their mind up with the raw material it needs in order to assemble words on a page.
Everything I’ve ever said, I learned from someone else. I create nothing. God or the great one or the architect of the universe or whatever anyone chooses to call it is the only that creates from scratch. All I do is merely reassemble what I’ve uploaded into my mind and the quality of what I download out of my mind onto the page depends on the quality of minds I’ve been exposing myself to.
I believe the majority of people who say they want to be writers or struggle with writing, run into the blocks they do because they do not abide by one of my favorite quotes relative to this topic, “Consistency is the last refuge of the un-imaginative.”
I hadn’t ever been a writer when I landed my first freelance gig and managed it no problem. It took far longer that I anticipated, but with time it has become a bit easier to switch into work mode and just get to it..
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