Writing Season
where to start when you don't know where to start
To write better (or more), you must dedicate small tributes of consistency from yourself. This promotes consistency and resilience. You should post once a week, even if it is shit. Write 300 words a day, even if you don’t have boo to say. You must build a ritual around the process of writing. You should habit stack. You shall then, and only then, optimise the process completely, so it breathes efficiency. Blah Blah Blah Bla Bla.
It’s that piece of this constant whirring, of self optimisation. To create better. To be better. To do better. To shape and mold a body and person that feels like me; that represents me. Clay between two hands, clear outlines of the daily stubby finger prints, being pressed into the soft soft model. Soon to be a better version of thine true self.I ask myself very often, why are you so fixated on this goal of writing when your animó on the habit is so, well, pathetic.
Who are you writing for? Where does it come from? What exactly does it mean?
I remember in 2023, this being the greatest and grandest year of reading and writing for me, to date. This being the year I read Patti Smith for the first time. M-train. It was so sad and beautiful and earnest. It was about nothing and all the things at the same time. I didn’t know her yet and I was reading about myself. Her having lived years beyond my own, but the poetry and whispers she inked felt like something I’d not yet had the wherewithal to put words to. Yet and all, they were all sitting there, in plain sight.
M Train made me punch drunk. Anything I had believed in until then was false and this was the only gospel that existed. I remember having this overwhelming sense of I-am-supposed-to-read-this-book-right-now.There was something stirring in my belly which was pure romanticism and senseless passion and purpose. It made me very aware something existed.
I don’t have any style. I only seem to write in first person, which makes me feel so self-absorbed. Which maybe indicates I am. I mimic and copy tangents and themes I’ve read elsewhere, imprinting my own veil on someone else’s work. My grammar is lacking. Creative inspiration doesn’t come naturally. I don’t really know if this is just a self-aggrandised diary entry or if it has any rhythm or flow. Mayhaps neither.
So when I have moments of doubt- do I actually like writing? Do I believe myself capable of creating anything? Where do I even begin? I try to remember I am only as good as the best chance I give myself. Nothing is perfect and nothing will ever be perfect. Not beginning won’t take me to any destination past my nose. But if I felt something once upon a time, there surely exists something I’ll discover again. Logic concludes, I’ll never discover a feeling similar to reading M Train in 2023 if my pads don’t pick up a pen or jab a key board.
Surely that’s enough to allow myself to give it a go. Surely you can do yourself this one credit.
That is all to say, leave the optimisation behind and just try. If you felt it at one point, it is only time before you feel it again.