|
We write because we have to; we write because we want to. It’s an act of insecurity, in its initial impulse – I matter! Hey! Over here! — but you have to discard that and know that what you’re saying is of interest not because it’s loud or frenetic or an expression of yourself but rather because it contains something ultimately worth saying, and something that would be worth saying even if someone other than you were saying it.
There are days I envy my friend (Hi, Stan), the lawyer — if only because he doesn’t wake up thinking “If I can’t be one of the Top 20 Lawyers in North America, why don’t I just quit?” — but I put that aside and I go about the work before me, because my writing is so my students might discover something about the world they live.
Yes, there’s ego involved — suggesting you are without vanity is the most vain thing a person can say –and I think every day of at least 20 people who are able to craft their words into visual ideas for others, while I struggle. You may think others write better than you. But no one, no one, can write better as you. And like hearing your own voice on an answering machine, reading your own work will always seem disjointed, distant, haunted; to others, if you’re speaking from a true place in yourself in honest service of the task at hand, it rings out connected, present and alive.
SO WRITE! WRITE DOWN YOUR THOUGHTS! WRITE THEM DOWN SO YOU CAN SEE THEM AND "HEAR" THEM AS THE PEOPLE YOU ARE WRITING OR TALKING TO WILL. YOU MIGHT CHANGE YOUR MIND OR OPINION...
There are days I envy my friend (Hi, Stan), the lawyer — if only because he doesn’t wake up thinking “If I can’t be one of the Top 20 Lawyers in North America, why don’t I just quit?” — but I put that aside and I go about the work before me, because my writing is so my students might discover something about the world they live.
Yes, there’s ego involved — suggesting you are without vanity is the most vain thing a person can say –and I think every day of at least 20 people who are able to craft their words into visual ideas for others, while I struggle. You may think others write better than you. But no one, no one, can write better as you. And like hearing your own voice on an answering machine, reading your own work will always seem disjointed, distant, haunted; to others, if you’re speaking from a true place in yourself in honest service of the task at hand, it rings out connected, present and alive.
SO WRITE! WRITE DOWN YOUR THOUGHTS! WRITE THEM DOWN SO YOU CAN SEE THEM AND "HEAR" THEM AS THE PEOPLE YOU ARE WRITING OR TALKING TO WILL. YOU MIGHT CHANGE YOUR MIND OR OPINION...