Learning to Be a Writer
They say if you want to be great at anything. You have to hone your craft every day when you are tired. When you are sad. When you are busy. When you don’t feel like you, you must be consumed by your need to be great at this one thing. So, if I want to be a writer, I MUST write every day without fail. So, on days like today, when I want nothing more than to finish laundry and sleep, I must write. And I should have it before the deadline I made up and didn’t tell anyone about. (I have less than 15 minutes left).
It’s my fault really. I should have written this blog post days ago, as that’s usually how it goes. I write several over the course of 2 days and schedule them to be posted. I have a schedule with already-built prompts, thoughts, key points, etc. And here I am, not even a month in, and finding it hard to keep to it.
The prompts are great. They help me focus and take out the guesswork of what I should do next. But sometimes, that’s not the story that wants to be told. I have always put a lot of pressure on myself to do what I said I would. Not only should I do it, but I have to do it with urgency and perfection. Me, wanting perfection when I’m not much of a speller, and grammar is a foreign concept I have not paid attention to since high school. (8 minutes left).
If I am being honest with myself, being a great writer is not, nor has it ever been my goal. I have always just wanted to write. It has always been an outside influence telling me I have to be great. It’s not worth it and not lucrative if I am not the best. So, I stopped writing. As a child, I wrote stories that brought people to tears. I wrote poems that teachers did not believe I wrote myself. I wrote what I felt, and I loved it.
That is what I’m doing today. Simply writing what I feel. I don’t need it to be perfect. I don’t need it to be the best. I don’t even need it to be good. I need to do it, and I need it to be honest. Today, I deviated from the plan, but I’m still here writing. To be a writer, all I have to do is write. Posting is extra. Being great is extra. Today, I am a writer, sharing my thoughts sporadically and naturally as I always intended.
If you are reading this, just be. Be what you want on your own terms. Everything else is just extra. (I’m 3 minutes over, but I really wanted to make sure I at least had my commas right).
