The Trick to Writing Straight Away · 2:59am Aug 15th, 2019
Here's a short blog for you, folks, the perfect size for the theme it preaches. One of the greatest challenges writers—or anyone engaging in an activity that thickens the tension in their hearts—face is starting.
To get through all the thoughts and fears and worries and doubts, conscious and subconscious that hold them back from getting the job started. The thickness of dread manifesting when one opens up their writing processes, a blank page or one half-written, a flow lost from the night before—and one that stutters at the start before it rights itself again.
Many people do not write for this reason. Plenty keep busy with subtle fear at opening that page in the first place, a simple right-click somehow made into an impossible task of the soul. How do so many just open, see the page and begin again?
I can't give you the answer for other writers. You'll have to read blogs and articles and books written by them for when they expose such secrets. All I can offer, in this case, is my own process for ditching those doubts, fucking those fears, and writing my way through my worries.
The trick isn't going to be 'just write' although what I may say may sound very close to that. But rather, you shouldn't worry about writing when you open up the page. Like an artist frozen at buying a new sketchbook, the fear to start it off well results in them not starting at all.
And like that artist, you should doodle in those first few pages to lower the stake—or to raise yourself to the challenge.
Let's ditch the metaphorical language for a second.
When you first come to your computer, do me a favour here, a small one—try not to think. Clear your mind. Relax. Do not fret. Fuck the fears. Be at peace as you open your word processes. Don't sweat anything yet. You do not have to write yet. Simply opening the page doesn't mean you have to write in it straight away.
Done that? Good.
You may be assaulted with worries at this point. Perhaps you should read some of your previous works to regain what has been lost. If that's the case, you may read a few stories to get a feel for your style again. Such a thing can work, sure, but it takes away from writing and imposes you must be a certain thing again for you to do well.
Or you may read other writers to get a feel for them. This also works, but I also do not like the pressure it enforces. More often than not, your words become forces, struggling and becoming something they're not used to.
And then, once you get really into the writing, when you're in the flow and the prose is your own, you tend to forget what you read before, what it was you were aiming for and keep with the what the demands of the work of you now. Be it something new or different. With this, you go into what the work demands—and all that reading before turned out not to be needed all that much.
You should still read plenty, of course, so long as it does not interfere with your writing time.
Instead, when you are feeling it, you should write whatever you please. If you've stopped thinking, now's the time to begin again, only this time, onto the page itself. Let your fingers sync to the wavelength of your mind. Express yourself. Every silly fear and overwhelming doubt that you were ever good to begin with.
Once you are on the page, the words may come a bit tricky at first, but as you let yourself go, allowing the word flow across the page, you'll quickly find yourself in a trance. All that you repressed inside of you, everything expanding and pressing against the skin—it shoots out like an air puncture in a balloon.
And you write.
And you write.
And you write.
Until it's all gone. The fears and tensions and doubts. There, on the page, is you. What you think and what you thought and what you feel and what you felt. Everything is there. A cadence to it all. Stutters and stops in maybe a few spots—but the whole of it, at least, comes through decently enough.
Click.
You're in. Once more, you exist on the page. The world around you is gone, and everything that isn't the words coming through on the page non-existent. This is where the greatest joy of writing comes, when you are relaxed and honest, when the style exists for something real, something... you.
Those who talk the talk, but don't walk the walk, even though their talk is legit, the lack of their walk renders the words hollow despite their truth. With this, I hope to offer something of an example of what I preach.
What follows below this text is something I wrote for myself to myself. I was getting started on a project that I wasn't feeling. My fears, of course, was trying to perfect my prose to sound as top-notch as Darf or Skirts or whatever. I like to impress people when I can, especially those whom I respect, and to me, prose always seems like the easiest and most superficial way to go about it.
But such ideals caused my writing to struggle.
And then, not feeling like writing, I did what I preached, freewriting, and found the cause to my woe. I typed it all out in under five minutes. In that, I was back into the world of words. They came easily—freely.
All because I didn't type my story right away. Instead, I allowed myself to free-write to get myself into the zone. Warming up if you will. I do this with every story that I start. You can see my efforts below:
This isn't a story that I have to sweat too much about. In fact, there aren't many of these stories that I have to do all that much sweating over. I don't what it is, but fear rises whenever my fingers strike the keys of my keyboard. It's not so much that I fear what others say, but rather, what those whom I respect think about both me and my work.
But I'm starting to realize the folly of such thinking.
I can keep upping my prose however much I like, and sure it makes the words look fancy across the page—but what good does that do? Style is always done best when it expresses story, allowing content to flow through in clever ways; the packaging mattering as much as the package itself.
What we all need to do—or what I need to do—is not think so much of others when I write. To allow my fingers to relax, my mind and body and soul to calm down. One shouldn't always write for the reception but rather for immersion. To come out of writing a story like one walking out of a movie theatre.
And I think this comes from not thinking too much, or sweating too much, or worrying too much, or doing too much of too much. The thing is—you'll never kick that feeling. That subtle fear, rising dread, the sludge that drudges your noblest of attempts. The trick, however, is to lessen it, to reason with it—to allows its pricks to keep you alert, to bleed a little ink—but never to shy away from the challenge.
Keep calm. Relax. And write. Don't worry about style, of the impression your prose will leave upon others. Rather, focus on the story. Really get into it. Be in it, live in that mystical world. Allow the characters to be real, to flaunt their stuff, buried aspects of yourself dug up to be exposed and expressed and rekindled with yourself.
Fiction is magic. But it's a half played game on both sides. Half the magic is in reading; the other half is in writing. Stories are a wonderful thing, especially when the style expresses it perfectly. Why do we have to stress and worry about such a great thing—rather than throwing ourselves at it, slamming our fingers down on our keys, going forward, regardless of the speeds we possess.
Enough talk. Let's get to writing.
And with that, I got to work, and kept at it for the next seven hours.
Whoosh! Another blog to tack onto the numbers. Damn it, boys! Are we already at 142 blogs? Y'know, sometimes I worry that I write too much about writing rather than writing itself. Of course, it's only through reevaluating it, over and over, that I'm able to do it, again and again.
Anyway.
These blogs are starting to come back together nicely. They still lack at parts, hollow points where the theme slips out. But I'm getting there. Getting used to discovering writing what I think and feel about things. It's been my desire to make these blogs feel a bit more proper as of late—introducing a kind of structure and style and shit.
Maybe outlining.
But I also don't want to lose the man talking to a wall kind of feeling these blogs have. Some person standing in a room, alone, speaking about the things they care about and listening to the echos that come off from the walls.
In any case, this is all shit for another day. Hope you learned something neat or will try something cool. If you ever want to reach me or chill with the boys, then consider hopping up and to my Discord server. Here.
Later boys.
~ Yr. Pal, B
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I saw the title and I was all, "buck's sake, B, I'm going as fast as I can"
Helpful!
Thanks, B :)
ehehehehehe
5106350
You do good work, and sometimes, good work requires us to go slow. Let's just say you do more good work than I do. >:D
5106351
Good seeing you around, my duder. Try to hang out more, eh bud?
5106352
Fixed. You cheeky bundle of greatness. Be a bro; write macro...
5106359
Will try! I drop off the map every now and again but when I climb back up I try to acknowledge to all my friends that I’m not ‘missing, presumed~‘ yet. I’ll keep you in mind when I pop my nose into places to say hello.
All good things,
Scar, nee Dusk
5106359
Uncomfortable truth: I need time to be injured by life so I have things to write about
Uncomfortabler truth: doesn't take long
5106363
Be proactive.
Hurt life instead.
5106363
Ouch. Rugburn is searing beneath my skin. But yeah. I think we've all been there.
5106369
5106363
Be three steps ahead of the game, write things that will injure life in the future, giving future-you things to write about... in the future~!
Such a pain when you're trying to write but can't work up the muse or push past writers block.
Macro will help my grow.
This makes me a very happy bug. I mean human! Yes, human.
Keep writing about writing, B.
And keep writing.
5106442 5106753
Thanks babes.
B_25, you’ve given me a new outlook on writing and all I can say to that is... Thank you!
:D
5108856
Thanks for the comment!