How to Write When You Would Rather Cut Your Split Ends One by One While Listening to America Idiot
Four ways to write more.
Write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart. — Maya Angelou
If you’ve ever written an email, a text, or an Insta blurb, you’re a writer. To be a writer, you need to perform the verb — you need to write. All writers write. It’s as simple as that.
What I love about writing is you can write a sentence, a paragraph, a post, a chapter, a story better each time, and then, you can improve it some more. By changing one word, or rearranging one sentence, you can make your writing clearer, more precise, and to the point for your reader.
The goal is to communicate and inspire with the least amount of words possible, using sentences and paragraphs that flow into the next. You want the first sentence to be so powerful that the reader wants to read the second sentence, and the third, and so on.
Writing is a skill, and anyone can improve on ability with practice. Whether you are a neophyte or Hemingway, the sentence can improve. OK, not Hemingway, because he died 60 years ago. The published work, A Farewell to Arms, wasn’t Hemingway’s first draft, he worked and sculpted each word, each sentence until he settled on the final draft.
That’s power.
You have the power to become a great writer through the number of iterations you commit to.
Write on bad days
Writing consistently every day for nearly a year, I’ve realized the bad days — the days I don’t want to write — are those that are most cathartic and when I get my best words written.
My best ideas come when I wrestle myself into the chair and fire up the laptop. Where does the resistance come from on a ‘bad day?’
A few things may be going on; I’ve waited too long to sit in the chair, so my writing muscle has atrophied a bit. When the writing muscle has too much downtime, the amount of time it takes to get back into the ease of writing for hours is longer. I’m avoiding something I don’t want to look at in greater depth because I know it will take emotional bandwidth I’m not willing to give or don’t have. My self-confidence has taken a recent hit; I got rejected from a publication again (the second time), or my teen screamed, “I hate you. You are the worse mother,” and I just can’t face my thoughts and my writing; these are the days that if I’m able to muster up the courage to face a blank screen, my writing is the most fruitful, raw, and honest.
Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day. — Norman Mailer
Read and keep notes
I keep notes. A lot of them. I keep notes on my life. Things like something an important person said to me that I never want to forget or something sweet my child grunted in between pushing my buttons. Maybe I should have been an attorney, I often wonder this.
I keep notes on interesting podcast episodes I listen to, on things I read in articles or something I want to look up later, on subjects from politics to where to get the best chocolate croissant in Paris. I’m not organized with my note keeping. They are everywhere. In my notes app, on Post-it notes stuck around the house and on my computer.
I have notes in notebooks (dozens of them) in boxes and in drawers.
I have been taking notes and leaving them everywhere since the age of five. I write down sentences that inspire me, make me think, make me cry, and make me want to write.
When I’m staring at a blank screen, unable to come up with one more thought, I go to my notes and inspiration is everywhere.
Today, I didn’t want to write.
It is beautiful where I am, it’s Memorial Day weekend, and I want to be outside on my bike or walking. I haven’t written much in the last week, nor do I feel like it, so I went to my notes.
The first paragraph I read was one of my favorite sections written in a short story “Good Country People,” by Flannery O’Connor it reads,
She decided that for the first time in her life, she was face to face with real innocence. This boy, with an instinct that came from beyond wisdom, had touched the truth about her. When after a minute, she said in a hoarse high voice, ‘All right,’ it was like surrendering to him completely. It was like losing her own life and finding it again, miraculously, in his.
If this paragraph doesn’t move you, check your pulse.
It makes me weep each time.
Specifically, the sentence, “with an instinct that came from beyond wisdom, had touched the truth about her.”
It strikes such a deep chord in me. It is so descriptive of what it feels like to know a strong connection with another human being. To feel understood, what we all want. If you’ve known that kind of love, it makes you weep for it. If you haven’t known it, it makes you weep for it.
After I dry my tears, I think, ‘I would kill to be able to write a paragraph like that.’
And I start writing.
I’m never going to write with such clarity and depth if I don’t start somewhere. With crap.
To master the ability to write a descriptive paragraph that “slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart,” as Flannery O’Connor and Maya Angelou were able to, I’m going to have to write a lot.
Lousy writing leads to good writing.
Listen to music
To set a specific mood for writing, I use music. I may not use music for writing Medium posts or posts for my blog about money, but for writing a story of fiction or non-fiction, I use it often.
Some of the more personal stories I write for Medium I use music to foster the mood I’m seeking. I use music to set the tone. Music changes how we perceive the world, it invokes specific memories.
A great song (in my opinion, whether a song is great or not is not subjective) is a shot of adrenaline to the body.
The right song will instantly change my mood.
When writing something political that pisses me off, I will start by blasting “Jesus of Suburbia” by Green Day or “Cabinet Battle #2” from the Broadway musical, Hamilton. I sing Hamilton’s part.
The volume is at the loudest possible decibel, and I don’t do anything but listen. And sing, of course. Background music doesn’t exist in my world.
I need to write something sad I blast anything by The Avery Brothers. If I want to write about love, well…there are thousands of songs to choose from.
Listening to Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” I get teary as soon as I hear his rich tone croon, “Wise men say…” If I ever find a man again worthy of marrying, that will be the first song we dance to at our wedding. Listen to it, how do you feel? Do you feel a close connection to love? Who do you think about? What would you write?
Sciencedaily.com writes,
Music and mood are closely interrelated — listening to a sad or happy song on the radio can make you feel more sad or happy. However, such mood changes not only affect how you feel they also change your perception.
Keep writing
The only way to become a better writer is to write. Keep at it, and you will improve. Persistence is the key to writing better.
You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually, you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.― Octavia E. Butler
Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering perfectionist. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.
