The 3 Essential Ingredients for Writing – NOW

by | Sep 26, 2014 | creativity, writing

After the last post, you’re aware that your time is running out.

Good IdeaGet urgentWrite

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You know you don’t want to die with your music (your book) inside you.

You want to write that thing.

You can feel it – just waiting to get out there and change some lives.

You KNOW it will be epic.

So you sit down and open a new document.

Look at the page. Look out the window. Decide to check your emails.

I know you would write. You know you would write.

You’ve even sat down at your desk – you’re all ready.

But you still don’t know where to start.

Let me help you here, with a recipe for getting writing, now.

I’m not even going to make you wait, because in case you’d not noticed, I am on an urgency bender right now.

Here it is:

1 – Take one idea. Make it a good one.
2 – Get urgent. Remember you’ll die.
3 – Write. Use your will, and just do it.

It’s no use beginning with a vague sort of idea, and seeing where it will go. That is for stream-of-consciousness stuff (very useful in its own right), and not for getting the thing just done. What you’re after here is a sense of purpose, and a direction. Not an exploration.

If your goal is decent wordage towards a book, then you’re not in it for the exploration, you don’t want to hang about admiring the landscape forever. You’re shooting for gold.

When this is the case, it helps to get really specific about what it is you’re going to write.

I’ll use myself as an example, because let’s face it: I write here as much to remind myself what’s needed as to be useful to you.

If I sit down and say to myself, “I’m going to write a blog post,” I can sit for hours at a time with nothing to show for it. I’ll write some half-hearted half-sentences, and then check to make sure Facebook hasn’t fallen over without me.

Then, emails will catch my eye, and after that? All is lost.

But if I sit down, knowing what I’m going to write, it changes everything.

Last blog post (this one, here), I was burning up with the desperate need to wake up all the creative sleepers out there – to impress upon you the dire need to create now, while there is still breath in your body and you have the gift of life to do so. And so it happened. That blog post still gives me chills to read – and not because I think it’s a good one.

It gives me chills because I remember the urgent, amazing focus that I had while I was writing. I knew what I wanted to say, and I just went on to say it.

It feels good to write like that.

It’s cathartic. It sings. It feels like it writes itself.

Tapping into your writing involves the letting go of self that all good meditative practices eventually provide. (This is also the state that stream-of-consciousness writing eventually gets you to. It just takes longer.)

That blog post was written so fast that I had blood rushing to the tips of my fingers because I was striking them so hard and so fast on the keyboard. My words were tripping over each other, and my brain was rushing on so fast that I almost couldn’t get the ideas out in time before the next one came.

So: have an idea. Make it a good one.

One that gives you chills to think of. One that makes you feel you’ll burst if you keep inside any more. This can be quite a gentle experience, a quiet urgency, rather than the furious gallop of idea and fingers. Gentle or not, it’s that desire to get it written, and get it written well is the important thing.

So far, our ingredients are:
One idea. Make it a good one.
Urgency. It has to get done NOW.

The final ingredient is sheer will.

You have to sit down and write at some point. There is no way to fake this bit. People fake the other two all the time.

Some even manage to get away with it – but not often. People can tell if you’re faking. It’s instinct. Think about it: you just know when someone is not being real with you, and it’s off-putting.

When you sit yourself down to write, and you give yourself the idea and make sure you’re inspired with the urgency, you will write, and write with a vengeance. Words will flow out of you – whether that’s a steady zen trickle, or a great fountaining Niagara.

I don’t care if what you have to write is light chick-lit comedy, or if it’s world-changing politics. If it’s in you to be written, then it needs writing. Why question its worth? What use is that of your one precious life?

Art needs to be made, not questioned before it’s even born. The understanding of it can come later – the questioning, the exploration. Just do it and see what’s born.

If I had battle-call music and a stirring anthem, I’d call you to the writing like any good epic battle poet. But all I have is this blog and the ingredients for writing:

Take one idea. Make it a good one.
Get urgent. Remember you’ll die.
Write. Use your will, and just do it.

Write like you’re surging forward into battle, like you’ve been waiting in the trenches for the order to fight. Go over the top like you’re facing the bayonets of the enemy, and write like you’ll not get the chance again.

As brilliant choreographer George Balanchine used to shout at his dancers:

What are you waiting for? What are you saving for? Now is all there is.

Go. Write. Now.

 

 

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