Why do you Write?

I have rarely waited for the muse to strike. I try to just write. It usually happens that I don't feel like it. I want to play. I want to run. I want to run for the hills and forget this dang writing thing. Then...
I can't resist any longer. I have to write something even if it is only...

                             and it doesn't even have to be a grocery list.

 It may be a list of reasons not to write. And number one on that list is: I don't feel like it.
. Well, I clean toilets when I don't feel like it, because it has to be done. So, I do it. It could get ugly in the house if I don't.

How does it get when I don't write? Ugly. My temper gets short, shorter than usual. I get to where I don't like anything, and I pick at everything.

Please know, that I am not a paid writer. So, money can not be the reason for writing. If it isn't worth money, is it worth anything? If you can't make money to help with the bills or just to have fun, what good is it? If you can't put a story down, what good is it?

It can be good because it makes me want to join the human race again. Love my hubby more. Not pick on the kids.

It makes me ME. No matter how long it has been, when I pick up the pen or keyboard, again, I am ME.

How about you? Why do you write? Is money the only thing? How about publishing? Is that a primary goal?
Writing a book does not appeal to me. At least not right now. If you cannot think of a reason to write, why write?

Writing is a Frustrating Art

I sometimes feel frustrated beyond belief.
 I want to write. I want to share.
 I don't want to write. I don't want to share.
I want a subject to appear with ideas around it, so that all I have to do is rearrange the words and the blog post will be complete and beautiful. To every one. Including me.
Do you feel that way? Are the rats in the attic just scurrying around and scuffling with each other?

                                               
Does your mind feel like this? Mine does.

Then I sit down and stare at a blank page and wonder where all the rats went. Surely they left behind something for me to chew on. A biscuit. A crumb.

A crumb.

 There is always something left behind that can fuel your imagination. You just have to let it. You cannot force the words. You need to let them scurry from place to place and finally, one will scurry into the corner and you can capture it. Then all you have to do is capture another one. Some days, you have to let them all go and start over.

My friends, here is to crumbs. Come back and see which ones I have found and what kind of mixture I made with it.
                              

Observe

               k  
                                        

The next word in our tools is 'observe'. There is a lot that can be said about observing. Some of us do it well and casually, some of us need road signs.
I need road signs.
My husband gave me a stained glass window for my birthday one year. It fit in a transom window over the door of our house. Our bedroom door was right beside it. You went by one to get to the other. He put the window in while I was gone one evening. I returned and went into the bedroom. Came out and watched tv and then later, went to bed.
My birthday was the next day.
I came out of our room and saw this long white paper banner that said "Happy Birthday" hanging from the top of the door. I thought it was pretty. He came home for lunch.
"Did you see your present?"
"Yes. I love the banner."
He then jerked the banner down to reveal my REAL present. You can hide my gifts in plain sight.
As writers, we should be way more observant than that.
Notice the bug on the leaf. See how he moves from one spot to the next. It may come in handy for a story about someone lost in the woods.
After your observation describe it in words and maybe even, a sketch. The better you understand it the better you can write about it.
Learn to observe.

Make it Grow

 The four tools that writers can use to make their writing grow are:

                            READ                      
                             
                           Write

                           Observe

                          Experience

We touched on them all in the last post, and I thought we could dig deeper in following posts and so, today, it is READ.
When you read, you should read what you like. Now, not just the genre you like, but a book that when you pick it up and read a few pages speaks to you.
I have a problem reading non-fiction. It always is dull, to me. I have read some and enjoyed them and when I stopped to figure out why, I discovered that they were written like good fiction.
Books about writing fall in the non-fiction category, and I have read several. One that I love, and I know I am not alone in this, is Stephen King's "On Writing". Even if you don't like his subject matter in his books, he gets this right.
A good thing to do when reading these books on writing is to read other books, or at least one, by the same author to see how he puts his advice into action.
Someone I have followed, through her newsletters and blogs, is C. Hope Clark. She has just recently published four fiction books that I have enjoyed. Her web site is here: fundsforwriters.com. She gives good advice and information on funds for writers. Her site has been on Writer's Digest best 101 sites for Writers for the last 15 years.
A young man that has helped me with my writing is Jeff Goins. He started a daily challenge a year ago that has helped me with making sure I write often, daily, in fact. He has a blog goinswriter.com.Jeff has also written several books, the latest is The Art of Work. I have enjoyed it.It is about living the life you want, not the one everyone expects of you.
So, read about writing and read, read, read. Try one of the links here and see what is up with them.


                                                                                                          

500 Words A Day 365 days

Five hundred words a day. Writing.
When I found this group it was by invitation of Jeff Goins. A writer I had followed for several years through his blogs. He has always been helpful and encouraging. I thought it sounded like fun. I thought I would be following it for a day or two.
Three hundred sixty-five days later, I was wrong.
I have found others who love writing and reading as much as I do.
I have found encouragers and helpers.
Every day found me wanting to write. Some days found me with 500 words to say, some days it may have been one hundred.
Every day found me writing or planning my writing. I don't have a total of words. I know I have been back at my blog more often than in the past. I love putting my words out there. Yeah, well, maybe not so much, but I do it.
My fellow wordies have encouraged me, cajoled me and loved me through some of the hardest writing times, just by being there and saying hello.
In short, okay maybe not so short, I have loved it and looked forward to what comes next.

Guest Post from my friend C. Hope Clark

When I Decided to Become a Writer

By C. Hope Clark

            We ask this question often of writers we consider ahead of us in this journey. For some reason, we want to measure where we are in comparison.

            I decided to become a writer in 1999 when I realized my soul was dying at the day job; it needed resuscitation through something more passionate, less affiliated with form filing and paper pushing. So I set out with a three-year plan to save my money, pay off my bills, negotiate an early retirement that left me with a small pension, and relocate if my husband so chose, in order to make up the income difference. Then on September 27, 2002, I walked out of the Strom Thurmond Federal Building in Columbia, SC where I worked, and I never looked back.

            We moved a few months later from South Carolina to Arizona then back to South Carolina, my writing ever mobile. I morphed from a mystery writer to reviewer, then from a freelancer to an entrepreneur with FundsforWriters. Today, I’m a mystery author, editor of a website/newsletter with thousands of followers, and a blogger.

            I’ve learned that this job never sits still. It moves under your feet, sometimes taking you with it, sometimes knocking you down. The Internet changes exponentially with improvements, or setbacks, depending on your personal experience, so we never find our niche and sit fat and happy anywhere. Sitting still is when we get passed by, run over, and forgotten. Assuming you want to earn a living at this business.

“Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." ~Howard Thurman, theologian

            While my 25 years with the federal government had empowered me to assist many people, my flame dimmed, my enthusiasm waned. In my middle-aged life I had more to offer the world than  my small cog in a bloated bureaucracy. My creative side needed an outlet. As an intelligent woman with an ample supply of common sense, I knew I could logically navigate this path, and it was time I tapped my right brain and make art, to make myself happier and leave a better imprint on this earth.

            Within a couple of months, my college-aged son approached and said, “You act a lot happier now, Mom.”

            I teared up once his back was turned. I was absolutely happier, which seemed to feed into my family’s dynamics. That’s when I decided that life was too short to fear a venture into a more passionate, more self-sustaining endeavor. Because what the world needs more of is indeed people who have come alive.

BIO: C. Hope Clark is author of The Carolina Slade Mystery Series and editor of FundsforWriters.com, a website and newsletter service for career writers. She has published in many freelance venues and speaks nationally. She lives on the banks of Lake Murray in central South Carolina. www.chopeclark.com / www.fundsforwriters.com

 

Writing

I started writing in earnest about twenty years ago. By that I mean intentionally writing stories and I took a course on writing for teens.

I started signing up for newsletters on line that encouraged writers and were resources for money and prompts and just generally good to read.




The first one I signed up for was Funds for Writers and Funds for Writers Small Markets. I learned to love C. Hope Clark and enjoyed her stories as the editor for FFW.
 She let us into her life and encouraged all to write more and more and more. Her answer to anyone who said what do I write about was: everything. If your child is sick. Write about it. If your chicken gets out. Write about it.
If you are bored. Write about it. Her mantra has always been to just write.



It took me years to get to where I would write about it. I thought my stuff was silly and incorrect, but there are ways to find out if it is incorrectly written, as in wrong verbs, wrong voice, etc. Silly is just a frame of mind and you may think it silly, I may think it enlightening.




I joined a writing challenge that has helped me immeasurably to get to writing. It is called 500 Hundred Words a Day and was started by another of my e-mail mentors: Jeff Goins. Both Jeff and Hope have the same mantra: write. Just put your bottom in the chair and write.



You can write first, then edit. Try to put your editor out to grass while you write, you can always invite him back in after you have written the end to the story or rant or blog post, whatever you write. If you leave him in place while writing, you may only get three words done, if you put him out to grass, it may go to three hundred. You will need to edit, anyway, so write as much as you can before you do that edit.
 And ALWAYS edit.


 Who wants to send your first stories out into the world without straightening their ties and brushing their hair?

500 Words a Day Challenge

Jeff Goins, founder of Tribe Writers and a writer that I have followed for several years, has issued a challenge to all writers to hit 500 words a day in January.


I decided to accept the challenge. I haven't done badly in upholding my end of it.


It just seems that Life gets in the way. I am not someone who can or will get up at 4am just to get my words in. We are retired. Which may mean just tired. I sleep until I wake up and then start my day. It usually ends about 10pm. All this means is that I have to find the time somewhere in the day to do it.


Aside from finding the time to do this the other problem is my mind.


It is a squirrel in a cage. It bounces from one side of the cage to the other, runs up the wall and looks at all the shiny ideas that come by. It cannot settle on any one thing.


My thoughts run through the cage and the mind cannot catch them. It tries. There are so many pretty ideas. Which one can I tame and write about. Maybe the stars that shine between the limbs of the tree, or maybe why the crows play in my driveway puddle or possibly the things I love.


Sometimes heavy thoughts come by for a fly through...when does life begin, when does it end, and what am I going to do with mine.


Most of writing is just words strung together. Words. No beginning, no middle and no end, just a quitting.


How do you manage to hitch the ideas to the words or the words to the ideas and make sense?


Well, there is no magic, no one size fits all, but I can tell you that the words you put together the better you get at it. We may not all be Robert B. Parker or James Michener, but we can each put our stories on paper and let people read and learn what and who we are.


I do love the idea of writing. Of perhaps becoming the next big thing in writing. The one thing I know that makes me a writer. I write.


I hope you enjoy these words and others that are here.


Come back again and visit.