Writing and the challenges

For someone that tries to write every day there are going to be challenge and some of the challenges is just getting the words down so that someone else can understand the feelings and thoughts that you are dealing with. It doesn’t have to be any major it is just sitting down and being able to write about the various thoughts and feelings. 

This evening, I was listening to a bunch of songs about feelings and being there and understanding what someone else is going through, but we also have to think about what we are going through at the same time because we might be able to be there for someone else but we also need to be there for ourselves.

As I am sitting here trying to get a bunch of thoughts, ideas and feelings out of my head, I know that there are a bunch of others that are trying to do the exact same thing and it can be such a challenge. Being able to sit down and just write and not let what anyone else says get in the way can be such a challenge and I know that I have done just that. I let some simple get in the way of me being able to write but I am now working on getting back to the writing that makes me happy.

When you are a writer and you want to write because that is what makes you happy you need to understand that even if someone says something that you think might be negative you need to step back and think about what the person might be saying. The person might be surprised at the amount of writing that you are able to accomplish, and they just messed up what they are trying to say. You also have to accept that a person might be jealous of what you are able to accomplish on a daily or weekly basis and you just need to accept that and move forward.

There are a lot of challenges that a writer needs to deal with and being able to accept the various comments either good or bad doesn’t matter because as a writer we need to do what makes us happy and if you let someone else’s comment stop you from writing that is a major problem. I know that I started to let a comment stop me from writing like I did before but after a simple conversation I have learned that the comments came out the wrong way and this person is encouraging me to write because that is what makes me happy.

Excuses for not writing

I decided to write up some of the excuses I have heard from people about why they don't write.

• I have too much to do.
• I don't have time to sit and do it
• I have nothing to write about
• No one will want to reach what I write
• I'm not good enough at it
• My ideas are silly
• Something else always gets in the way
• I have too many ideas and can't focus on one

These are some of the reasons/excuses I have heard about why someone isn't writing and they keep saying that they want to be a writer. Maybe they aren't going to be the best writer or the fastest writer but at least they will get some enjoyment out of the actual process of sitting down and putting words to paper. I think the best reason/excuse I heard was “I can't write anything on a computer file because if I am writing on there it has to be perfect otherwise it isn't good enough and I spend way too much time editing what I wrote. I can only do my writing on paper and it takes forever to get a thought down.” If this person saw some of my writing on my journals they would wonder what I was thinking but at least I get the thoughts down quickly and then work on making them sound better.

I for one did use a lot of those excuses earlier and then I decided that I just had to take the time to sit down and try to write. I have to admit that not everything I write is ever seen by any one other than myself but at least I sit down and write.

One of the biggest things that I did for myself was to set up a spreadsheet to track my word count each day for my journal and blog writing that I do. This spreadsheet has been going on since 2013 and I track each day and if I wrote and how many words actually made it to paper/computer document. Of course I have seen that at the beginning I missed a lot of days because I just couldn't find the time to sit and write. For me making myself accountable for sitting and actually getting a few words down onto paper each day helped me in a number of ways. I am no longer afraid of that blank slate any longer because I know that just being able to get a few words done normally starts the process for the rest of my writing. The practice of writing has made it so much easier to write when I need to write something for work or my blogs. This spreadsheet also shows me how many days in a row I have been able to write and that is also motivating for me. As of this morning I have reached 449 consecutive days of writing. Maybe not always a lot of words but at least I have written something.

I know that I used a lot of excuses when I started writing and the biggest one was I wasn't good enough. Maybe I am not the faster writer or the greatest writer but at least I enjoy what I am going. Yes, when you start writing you are going to come up with a million excuses why you aren't writing but you have to tell yourself that these are just excuses and sit down and try. One of the first exercises is to write out all your different excuses and then see how you can know them off that list.