Coming To Terms With Your Passion And Reality

There are many writers who have a hard time coming to terms with their passion for writing. Especially the beginner. All their desires for writing and their hopes and expectations begin to meet up with reality. They want to write like a master, and they believe that if they could only get there more quickly, they would truly enjoy the feeling they get from such accomplishment. But this fact remains: no one can rush greatness. It comes as it chooses.

And that is where the frustration starts with most writers. They begin to realize that writing like a master requires not only conviction and heart, but also experience and professionalism. So, not only do beginners often get frustrated about having little to offer when it comes to having something worth saying, but they feel as if their writing skill will never measure up. Well, that’s just negative thinking, and no one ever gets anywhere when they start out with such a small view of themselves and what they have to offer.

Having a high opinion of the writing process, and holding a grand view of one’s own potential, is not a bad thing. It only becomes bad after being told by honest readers that one should get better, and not listening. It gets worse when one begins to think that second and third drafts are not necessary and that every sentence/paragraph/stanza just written is flawless. So, instead of extremely negative or overwhelmingly positive attitudes, a writer really should claim a middle ground where positivity does not bloat the ego, and where negativity does not harm the talent. Well, in such an endeavor, this is the best advice: Don’t try so hard!

Don’t Try So Hard

Don’t try to emulate Shakespeare’s sonnets simply because you’ve been told by your English teacher that his sonnets are the best (even if you agree or not). Don’t try to mimic Hemingway’s style if the only reason for doing so is that his style looks so effortless. Finding your own style, your own voice in what you write, depends on you and you alone, and lots of practice.

In a previous If You Suck At Grammar article, it was brought up that a journal is a poet’s schoolyard. Well, it’s not just a poet’s schoolyard, it’s any writer’s schoolyard, where words are the hands and feet, and sentences and paragraphs are the monkey-bars and swings. It is where the writer can exercise his talents and skills without fear or the pressure to do good. And, since your personal writing voice depends so much on you to develop it, then it’s obvious that writing begins with the writer.

Every writer must have something that is to them, worth saying, and must want to say it. He or she must also know how to say it with as much clarity and effect as is possible to them. These first two requirements are not as qualifiably teachable as is the latter; They must be learned in a different way. However, learning to say something clearly and with effectiveness can be taught much more easily. That makes learning to answer the question “How do I measure up to experienced professionals?” also a little easier, because the answer is: Don’t try so hard!

From pg. 4 of Prose Style by Stone & Bell: “Don’t try to be ‘professional’; try to be honest with yourself, with your own feelings and thoughts, and with the ideas you encounter in your reading. There is nearly always some point where you and your experience intersect with those ideas, some point where you can speak with authority. The point may be only a tiny corner of a large issue, and may take some pondering to find; but authority is none the less real for being asserted in a small matter. Writing about Shakespeare or the Second World War is inherently no more interesting than writing about your roommate. The interest depends not on the size of the subject, but on what you have to say.”

What Do You Want To Say?

There are several kinds of writers, but the two most common are the writer who just wants to entertain, and the writer who wants to enlighten. There are writers who want to do both, but for clarity’s sake let’s keep to these two.

Just to be clear, even a writer who simply wants to connect with a reader through emotive or provocative writing has a particular message to share, and through either entertaining or enlightening or a mixture of both, the medium is accomplished by perseverence and practice, and of course, knowing what you want to say.

To determine which one of these you want to be, just ask yourself: Is there something you want to say to people through your written words? If there is, what is it? Here we approach theme, but let’s not get too directly invloved in this subject just yet. Let us simply define ourselves according to our goals as writers. Do we have something in particular we want to share, some message we want to get across?

Personally, I’d like to think that every writer, at least on some level, does have a message — even if it’s simply: Hey, look what we’ve become!

Self-Discovery

So, where does our inclination to write come from? It comes from our self discovery. We see others doing so with such verve and wit, with such daring and awe-inspiring accomplishments, that we want to find that for ourselves. Writing is a very provocative way of discovering oneself, and we do it by finding things to write that affect us, that drive us to say something, that move us and reveal our desires or fears, dislikes or foibles. This is why journalizing can be such an aid to the aspiring writer in developing a personal style and tempering the blades of grammar. The more you practice it, the better you become.

Keep Trying

We have always known that no person is perfect. The same goes for writers. No matter how good we get, there will always be mistakes to trip us up. But giving up by staying down has never been a successful writer’s last action. Quite the contrary; it is the writer that gets back up, recomposes, and continues the struggle who finds the treasure he or she seeks. And, let’s not forget what Captain Jack Sparrow once said to Will Turner: “Not all treasure is silver and gold, mate.”

It is the persistent attitude, the undying determination a writer shares with Mr. Will Turner that in the end wins out. He would never give up hope in saving the beautiful Miss Swann, and neither should any writer give up on a cherished dream, no matter how grand or lofty it appears. Keep trying. Continue the struggle. Be steadfast and sure. Stay true to your perseverence. Choose today what you want for tomorrow, and work toward it.