Mary, Mary quite contrary, how does your writing grow? Keep writing, keep writing, keep writing. At the end of last month I made a commitment to myself to form a new habit of writing something everyday for a whole month. The idea was that writing would become one of my daily habits, like having a shower or brushing my teeth. My aim is to write something worthwhile and of substance and perhaps even publish it on my blog. As you will note I didn’t commit to publishing every day, quite frankly some of the writing has been rubbish!
Today is day 13 of the daily writing and I’ve just realised that there are 31 days in August and not 30 as I scribbled initially. Don’t know how I missed that extra day; I guess that in my haste to start daily writing the enthusiasm was so great that I simply overlooked the fact that August has 31 days. How could I do that? August 31 is a celebratory day, every year, my birthday! In celebration of a potential great writer one day, (ha!), who knows …I have been told that ‘we have within us all the resources we ever need’. At present I’m exploring what ‘writing resources’ I have within me. I encourage you to try. At times I’m quite surprised about what comes about in the early morning write. For me this is a good time to write, although sometimes work breaks the early morning writing routine. I have found that when that happens, the late night scribble before I retire for the evening is just not as satisfying for me. By then my head is so full of stuff that it quashes any form of creativity and free thinking and there’s a little internal voice tweeting ‘time for bed, time for bed’.
I wonder if the great writers, poets and playwrights of today and yesteryear had these issues when compiling their manuscripts and musings. What writing tips would they pass on to us novice writers about daily writing or even writing in general?
Ernest Hemingway would rise well before dawn and begin writing. He would write for four or five hours and then was finished for the day. He spent the rest of his day “living” and “experiencing” things on which he might write in the future. But more interestingly, he tried always to complete his daily writing with a thought in his mind as to how he would start off the next morning’s prose. He kept in his mind a sentence, sometimes even a paragraph, or merely a thought, with which to begin the next morning
ReplyDeleteThanks for this Tom. I think I could learn something from Hemingway's writing discipline. To date I'm managing to write a little piece every morning but haven't quite made it to the 'dawn writing' stage. Now that would be a challenge for me! However, it has got me thinking ... what would that be like? Will keep you posted.
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