Chapter After Chapter
I started a new book on writing this morning: Chapter After Chapter, Discover the Dedication & Focus You Need to Write the Book of Your Dreams by Heather Sellers. I have to say that after only chapter one, this book is going on my list of “must reads for writers”.
Heather speaks directly to the perfectionistic procrastinator in all writers, urging us out of the fairy tale land in our heads and onto the raw, very-rough terrain of our ideas in print. Actually sitting down TO WRITE is what the book is about, and it’s working. Here I am. Hey, it may only be a blog entry, but it’s better than just thinking about writing a blog entry.
The truth is that all the world over, people have ideas. For everything. And ideas are great things. We need them, but for most of my life now, that’s largely all I’ve had, and I’ve kept them in the safest non-space in creation: the ever-changing cosmos between my ears. That’s why I’m not actually getting anywhere with my writing.
Writers write for a myriad of reasons. Self-discovery. Self-expression. But at the end of all that, at the end where the “aha” moment should be – God, please let it be there – we should have something to present to the world, something that will make a little more sense of our experiences here, give a little hope, encouragement or just offer a passing “I’ve been there, too, hang on”. Because, what’s the point of understanding ourselves better if not to share the insight?
So instead of thinking to myself “I need to write my novel”, I will ask myself ”What do I see or understand that could be of use to someone else?” Because though humanity experiences the same events, how we react to them, process them is legion. And somewhere in all that living and learning and hoping and yearning lie all the seeds we will ever need. The seeds of gifts that, while perhaps not ”perfect” as the often unrealistically high standards of writers go, will connect with others on a core level and ease them in some material way.
And what better reward is there for writing … or anything for that matter?
