Stop Thinking, Start Writing

Since everyone around my age seems to be dying, that got me thinking about what I should write about tonight. Don't worry. I don't mean about dying itself. I mean I have been thinking about how when I was younger and had "my whole life ahead of me," I had all these ideas of what I might be doing one day, or what things I would like to be happening, but now that I am at the age where it seems like everyone is dying, I'm thinking I don't have that much more time left. When I think about not having much time left, I think whatever it is I want to be doing, I had best be doing it, or I will run out of time. I have written for newspapers, I have written a master's thesis, a doctoral dissertation, a couple of professional journal articles, dozens of songs, and I have self-published a memoir, and the only thing I really have learned is that you learn to write like you learn to do anything else, and that is by doing it. As a child, I wrote fiction, and I wrote fiction when I took a creative writing class when I was teaching college in Kentucky in 1998-2000. I wrote a short story a week for six weeks. Since then I have not written any more stories. That bothers me quite a bit, but there's nothing I can do about it. So I blog now. I didn't like to call it blogging, because, since I had written articles for publication, what I wrote were stories or articles, not "blogs." Even after I learned that "blog" is short for "web log," I still didn't like the term, and I still don't like it. But that is irrelevant (what I like or don't like). Blogging is kind of new to me. I used to journal a lot, and then I got kind of tired of filling up those composition books, and then filling up ten gallon plastic boxes with all those composition books. I have started looking through them, because I have read that you shouldn't throw anything away, because you might write something you can use later. Just because I read that you should keep everything doesn't mean I believe that should be a rule of thumb for everyone. I don't believe that. Just like everything else, it might work for you, or it might not. I have run across things I wrote years ago, and most of them are not worth keeping. I am not convinced that everything you write is going to be worth keeping. I think I wrote good newspaper stories and features, and I know that because I was paid to write them, but I'm not doing that now. What I'm doing now is writing every day because I think that is what I am supposed to do. It is kind of a journey. I don't know where it's heading really, but I'm along for the ride, and about a dozen people are on it with me, which also kind of helps make it worthwhile. So, thank you if you are reading this. I appreciate you. Nine times out of ten, when I sit down here to write something every night, I have no idea what I'm going to write about. I don't read a whole lot about writing, but I have always operated under the same assumption as some writers I have read about, who said they get their ideas about what they're going to write from writing. That's what I always tell children I am privileged to work with about writing. Kids come to work with me, and if I'm fortunate enough to have a writing group, I always tell anyone who is sitting there with their chin in their hand saying, "I'm thinking," to just start writing, the ideas will come, and they usually do. Sometimes I will help them get started by suggesting something, and kids are usually pretty receptive in that way, and they write the best stories too, before they have been shut down by their own expectations or peer pressures of various kinds. I cringe whenever I hear a child say, "I hate writing." It saddens me so much. I have my own ideas about how that happens, but right here and right now is probably not the place to share that. I am just glad when I get the opportunity to help anyone stir up the gift that is in them. A lot of authors who write about writing have said getting published is not for everyone, or most writers will not be published, and that you shouldn't let that discourage you. So I will say that to you. Don't give up. Whether you just write in a composition book or a spiral notebook, or whether you blog, just keep doing it, because the process is good for the soul. If you don't write, you don't write. Don't worry about it, but if you do, don't quit. One of the things I learned about creativity in education with children is to emphasize "process over product," and I believe that. Writing is something that is good for everyone who does it. I don't know what life would be like if I didn't write. Writing is just thinking on paper. It's putting into words things that are inside. It's getting things out that are inside, and maybe that's a valuable process in its own right. I happen to think it is. So when I say, "Stop thinking, start writing," obviously I don't mean stop thinking once you've started writing. Thinking and writing go hand in hand. I am hoping to be able to write fiction again, but I may need to join a writing group or something. I probably need to dig out those stories I wrote in 1998 or 1999 and read them. I don't know. Right now, I think I'm having some sort of "desert" experience, and it's not terribly exciting, but even so, writing is a useful activity, as is reading. Oh, yes, and reading is also a useful activity, which also goes along with thinking and writing. If I'd had my way, maybe the three Rs would have been the three Rs and a T: reading, writing, arithmetic and thinking, and maybe actually put arithmetic at the end, as it was always the bane of my existence. Well, add, subtract, multiply and divide, and maybe fractions, but you can leave out the geometry and the algebra, thank you anyway, and I can see that my time is up. We'll leave that topic for another day, maybe.