Just Keep Writing

*Originally posted April 2016

Everyone who gives advice to anyone about anything pretty much says the same:  Just do it and just keep doing it.  I think where they fail in their efforts is to define what 'it' is.

When an author gives the advice of "just keep writing".  It's overly simplistic.  Because there's more to writing than just writing.  There's research (especially if you're writing details about something which you have no practical experience).  Research is a very important part of writing.  Even if you're writing about yourself, you can't just write and not research different events from your life.  Research informs your writing - and sometimes entirely changes the direction you had planned to go.

Another important aspect to 'just keep writing' is reading.  Every writer will also tell people to read.  Basically, this is research.  When you read, you should explore what you like (or don't like) about a specific style and/or author.  You should be able to identify for yourself which elements you want to incorporate into your own style and voice and which ones you want to avoid.  But, I think here too, people limit themselves.  If you are a playwright, of course you should read plays.  But don't stop with genres presented in theatre, read television and film screenplays as well - especially if you plan to write a play that is fairly complex in it's technical aspects.  And don't stop there either.  Read novels and short stories, read poetry, read fan-fiction.  You never know when a selected style will inspire or inform your own writing.  Don't limit yourself!

How an aspiring writer might interpret 'just keep writing' is an important consideration as well.  Some beginners (I was guilty of this as well) interpret 'just keep writing' in a narrow sense.  "No matter what else you might want to write, focus on writing the thing you're currently writing."  Or worse (for me) "You must write 1000 words a day on your work."  For me, this was the death of my writing for many months.  It wasn't inspiring, it was paralysing.  It increased my sense of writer's block, feeling like a failure, and utter despair that I might ever be "a writer."

And that's the problem.  Because, we're all writers.  I know, I know.  "Everyone says that."  But in this case it's literally true.  Even the cavemen who left drawings for us to find were writers.  Some of us write in 140 characters.  Some of us write 200 page novels.  Some of us write 20 page instruction manuals.  Some of us write fan-fiction. Some of us blog.  But writing isn't about what style you write.  I would argue it's not even whether others enjoy your writing or not.  For a writer, it's the actual process of writing that is important.  (It's all in the journey.)  When readers can step into your world and take that journey with you, that's when the magic created by writing really happens.  And when you can take those experiences, integrate them into yourself and then write something new, something challenging for you, that's when you can see just how much you've grown as a writer.

So, now, when I hear 'just keep writing', I don't limit myself.  This blog, my tweets, my fan-fiction, my play, things I do at work, among many other things - it's all writing.  It all contributes to birthing my various projects from ideas in my head into words on a page.