The Worst Writing Advice I Ever Received

“Tricia, this isn’t your season for writing.  Hopefully it will come in a few more years, likely after years of rejection letters and strife and heartbreak.  Right now, this is your season to be a mom and a wife, to give your time to them first.  The best thing you can do for your writing is to collect your ideas, write them down or file them away, and come back to them in a few years.”

Well, okay, if you say so.  But you’re kind of an angry, stifled writer.

Writing down my ideas, stowing them away, only made me crazy in the kind of way that I could bite someone.  This tip didn’t play out so well for me.  And, my goodness, am I thankful that one doesn’t have to follow all the advice of her predecessors.

The best thing I could do for my writing was to write.  Just write.  

As I wrote down one observation, I found another one.  And another.  And I soon discovered that I only ran out of ideas if I stopped writing about them.  As long as I kept my fingers talking, more ideas came right down the conveyor belt. Soon, the flat surfaces of my house were covered with post-it notes, headlines captured until I could sit down and put it on paper.

Some say writer’s block is just another word for stage fright.

So, do you want to be a writer?

Here is my advice:  Write.

Aside from my journals and deepest whispers that I’ll never say out loud, I don’t write well if I don’t have an audience.  I write for someone to read.  You can start a blog for free and anonymously, and you can write every day to a virtual audience, and you’ll never see their faces to read between their lines and decide if they like what you wrote.  You can just write and believe that they love it, that they’re telling their friends about you, that more and more people will sign on every day.

And if you aspire to write anything, ever,

for publication, syndication, or fabrication,

for yourself or anyone else,

as a real writer or as one masquerading to be,

please read Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg.

This is the best advice I can give you.  And by all means, start today.  There’s no reason not to.

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Pick up a pen and just write, just write, just write.  In the middle of the world, make one positive step.  In the center of chaos, make one definitive act.  Just write.  Say yes, stay alive, be awake.  Just write.  Just write.  Just write.

~ (as you might have guess, my new favorite girl) Natalie Goldberg