I write semi-frequently, and thankfully, I usually don’t have to force myself. Sometimes I just feel the writing bug when I think about certain things. Like philosophy. Sometimes I’ll hear a really inspiring story and want to put something down on paper about it. Or sometimes I’ll hear someone say something that gets the gears going for a possible essay. It’s like there are all these ideas welling up inside me, just waiting to get out.
Even so, writing isn’t easy. I have this idea that if you’re not writing at a breakneck speed, perfectly formed prose just pouring out of you like water out of a faucet, you’re not doing things right. I really need to get rid of that idea, because if it’s true, I’m not doing things right. In Stephen King’s On Writing (I know it’s not great literature, but I still enjoyed it) he says that writing’s accomplished “one word at a time.”
How true that is! I am driven to write when I feel emotions, ideas, and stories welling up in me, but the actual act of writing is so much different. When you get right down to it, you’re just putting words down on paper, and the words never flow quite as well as the ideas.
Andrew
Sep 29 2003
05:40 am
I write semi-frequently, and thankfully, I usually don’t have to force myself. Sometimes I just feel the writing bug when I think about certain things. Like philosophy. Sometimes I’ll hear a really inspiring story and want to put something down on paper about it. Or sometimes I’ll hear someone say something that gets the gears going for a possible essay. It’s like there are all these ideas welling up inside me, just waiting to get out.
Even so, writing isn’t easy. I have this idea that if you’re not writing at a breakneck speed, perfectly formed prose just pouring out of you like water out of a faucet, you’re not doing things right. I really need to get rid of that idea, because if it’s true, I’m not doing things right. In Stephen King’s On Writing (I know it’s not great literature, but I still enjoyed it) he says that writing’s accomplished “one word at a time.”
How true that is! I am driven to write when I feel emotions, ideas, and stories welling up in me, but the actual act of writing is so much different. When you get right down to it, you’re just putting words down on paper, and the words never flow quite as well as the ideas.