Writing Tip

Writing is an exploration. You start

from nothing and learn as you go.

E.L. Doctorow, American Author

         

How often have we sat staring at a blank page, or a blank screen, feeling the pressure to write or somehow under external pressure to meet a deadline, and the inspiration will not come. We invoke the Muse, we try to conjure an image but the block remains. We know we are not alone. Many before us have trod this lonely path. Remembering that we start from a wellspring of memory, experience, imagination, the first words appear on the page. After the first baby steps another sentence appears. What’s holding me back? I know what I want to say. How to find the words, put them in the proper order? If we care about our craft, we want these words to express who we are. Someone else will read them. That’s it, everyone fears being judged. When a writer presses forward in the face of the obstacles of self-doubt and concern for how her efforts will be received, she will permit the inner voice to let the words flow.

E. L. Doctorow gives us another insight: “Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.” 

Authors, poets, essayists take heart. Once we have stepped out into the void and found we did not plummet into the abyss, our courage has been strengthened, our resolve becomes firmer. Even criticism pushes us forward. Praise and appreciation becomes the fertilizer in the garden of  our creativity.

Lastly, From Mark Twain: “Courage is not the absence of fear, or resistance to fear. It is the mastery of fear.”