I've been neglecting writing lately. Writing anything at all. I'll sit down and stare at my computer screen or piece of paper and wait for a very long time before giving up. I hardly write any words, and if i do, I usually discard them.
I couldn't figure it out. Why was I having writers block all of the sudden? I mean, sure, I've been pretty busy with starting college and haven't had a lot of time to feed my creative muse, but that's no excuse. I still have plenty of ideas. I should be able to write something.
It eventually got to the point where I would procrastinate sitting down to write at all, and my spree of writing something, anything, every day fell by the wayside like a discarded cigarette butt on the freeway.
But, I've finally figured it out. I've gotten myself into a rut where I convince myself that my simple, silly ideas are not good enough, are not worth being written down. And that is just wrong.
Writing takes practice. Journaling, making observations about little tidbits of every day life, writing crappy poems and sappy love songs that have no rhyme or tune and are basically just a vomit of feelings on the page are all important things in the writing process. Little stories that make no sense, have no plot, and are overall boring and dull are still important stories to write. Sure, they probably won't get published, but that's part of being a writer. Things you write are not always going to get published. Things you think and say are not always going to be what others want to hear. That is not important, at least not in this moment, not in this stage of my writing experience. The important thing is to practice, to write down those love songs and raw feelings and plot-less paragraphs. It's the only way to get better, to find what's inside and looking to come out. and maybe once you've weeded through the junk and raw emotion that's cluttering up your mind, screaming to get out, you'll find below it a lovely beautiful flower waiting to bloom, a flower that will win a poetry contest or become a published novel.
Because writing is not cut an dry like making a cake or building a cupboard. You can't just mix the ingredients and hammer the wood and come out with a perfect product every time, no matter how well you know what you are doing, no matter how experienced you are. Because in writing, so much of the process is going out and piking out just the right ingredients for that cake and cutting down your own wood for the cupboard. It takes time and energy, and sometimes we sit down and say "I'll just eat these stale cookies instead. Who needs a cake?" But the truth is, the world is waiting to touch that delightful morsel you've created. And if you forgo getting the ingridents together, if you forgo measuring out just right, you are never going to have a cake, and eat it too.
So get off the internet and get to writing! Put in some music, dance in the rain for a while, do something that makes you happy and forget about the judgment. Write something for you, something that's stupid and silly. Write something that doesn't make sense. Stop procrastinating and just write!
This has been a message not only from me to you, but also from me to me. Thank you for reading :)
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