So there I was, having Wrist to Forehead Saturday. A full blown case, too. Oh, I was being pathetic. It was embarrassing. The thing was I could. Not. Write. A. Thing.
I had a lovely Mohawk Valley adventure to write about. Failing that, I had taken not one but two walks with my schnoodle, Tabby. Always acceptable for a Saturday post. I understand the Write It Anyways philosophy. I got out my notebook. I found a pen. I wrote a sentence and scribbled it out. I could not think of an alternative.
“This NEVER happens to me!” I wailed. I had wailed it about thirty-eight times (in my head, of course; I didn’t want to scare the dog), before a little voice in my head said, “Don’t be silly; it happens to you all the time. That’s why you have so damn many lame posts.”
Well, I believe my theme yesterday was “Things Happen.” Or, as the case may be, Things Don’t Happen. In this case, writing the post I had intended to write is not going to happen.
In the alternative, let us briefly consider the Write It Anyways philosophy. I know, half-baked philosophy is for Lame Post Friday. However, since some do not consider this philosophy half-baked, I will make bold to compose a paragraph or two. For one thing, I do not want today to be the first day in over a year and a half that I don’t make a blog post.
Most professional writers acknowledge that you can’t wait for inspiration to strike. If you wait till you are “in the mood” to write, you will write very little. Indeed, I have found in my own experience that most of the time, if I just pick up the pen (or pencil, or put my fingers on the keyboard, if we must be literal as well as literary), words will appear.
Oh, it’s fun when they do. One of my favorite things is, it gets so they appear more easily and regularly. It’s true! Since I’ve been writing the blog, I do spend less time staring at a blank piece of paper. I spend less time staring into space thinking about writing. It’s kind of like running: the more you do it, the more you are able to do it (no, I haven’t started running again, let’s not open THAT can of worms!).
Um, slight disclaimer here: unlike running, it is not as easy to be good at writing. If I keep putting my feet down on the ground one after the other, I will get someplace and I will get there increasingly quicker or go increasingly further. If I put more words on the paper, I will be able to put increasingly more words on the paper, but that does not mean they will be any more interesting for others to read.
Case in point: this post.
On the other hand, if I start to worry about my every every word being deathless prose, I will surely write fewer words. The write-it-and-scribble-it-out disease happens because there is that voice in my head saying, “That’s not good enough” (I’m not sure if it’s the same voice that said, “It happens to you all the time,” but it’s a pretty good bet). Today I said to myself, “It doesn’t have to be brilliant, it just has to be written.”
And now I have written over 500 words. It might be foolish, but it is a blog post. I’ll work on making it brilliant tomorrow. And I will write about our trip to the Capitol Theatre in Rome, NY for a screening of Rear Window (preview of coming attractions). Um, I’m not promising that will be brilliant, but I’ll work on it.
