{"id":66,"date":"2015-05-25T16:30:15","date_gmt":"2015-05-25T21:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/justwritesomething.com\/?p=66"},"modified":"2015-05-25T16:30:15","modified_gmt":"2015-05-25T21:30:15","slug":"not-writing-for-all-the-wrong-reasons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justwritesomething.com\/?p=66","title":{"rendered":"Not Writing for all the Wrong Reasons"},"content":{"rendered":"

I originally started this blog\u00a0for the express purpose of forcing myself to write something (hence the name) as often as possible and hopefully with enough frequency to get myself into the habit<\/em> of writing – a form of conditioning I had hoped would lead to inveterate\u00a0writing and then ultimately, to transitioning into a career as an actual writer. But it hasn’t happened that way (at least not yet), and I have struggled to figure out why I can’t force myself to sit down and finish any of the half-dozen or so drafts I have started. But I’m not writing. \u00a0And I’m not writing for all the wrong reasons.<\/p>\n

I figured it out today. \u00a0I don’t want to just write something “OK” or “good”. I want to write something\u00a0brilliant.\u00a0<\/em>Some part of my ego wants to sit back after I hit the “Publish” button and wait for the accolades. \u00a0I want to have people blogging about my writing. \u00a0I want people to tweet about my blogs. \u00a0I want subscribers by the tens of thousands, waiting for my<\/em> next offering, like I have waited for The Winds of Winter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Reality struck today while I was sitting in a laundromat washing my underwear, towels and jeans. \u00a0Writing begets writing, and with practice (read: even more writing<\/em>), it\u00a0should (and usually\u00a0does<\/em>) get\u00a0better. \u00a0I recently re-read Carrie<\/a><\/em>\u00a0– Stephen King’s<\/a> very first published novel. \u00a0I just started reading Doctor Sleep<\/a><\/em> (a sort-of sequel to The Shining<\/a><\/em>) and the evolution and growth\u00a0in King’s (already impressive) writing from 1975 to 2013 stunned and amazed me. \u00a0Unlike Carrie (<\/em>which he wrote\u00a0in a form called\u00a0epistolary<\/a>), <\/em>in\u00a0Doctor Sleep, <\/em>his sentences are longer where they\u00a0help\u00a0to carry the reader through some complexity in the story, and perfunctory to perfection when it works to jolt the reader. King was 27 when he published\u00a0Carrie.\u00a0<\/em>He was 66 when he published Doctor Sleep.<\/i>\u00a0 Since he published Carrie,\u00a0<\/em>King has published 34,000 pages of writing!\u00a0<\/i>\u00a0And this doesn’t count the pages he tossed in the round file, lost on bad floppy disks back in the 80’s, accidentally deleted from his word processor in the 90’s and more recently parked on a hard drive, waiting for completion some day.<\/p>\n

That number – 34,000 pages – is staggering to me, so I did some math. \u00a0Since he published\u00a0Carrie\u00a0<\/i>on April 5th, 1974 – 15,025 days have passed to date. \u00a0That works out to a little over 2.25 pages a day, every day, for the past 41 years. \u00a0But King has actually been quoted as saying that he writes 2,000 words\u00a0per day every day<\/em>, and that \u201c… only under dire circumstances do I allow myself to shut down before I get my 2,000 words.\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

I don’t know when this ritual started for him, but I’m not getting any younger and if I ever hope to write something worth publishing – something with even a fraction of\u00a0the literary\u00a0endurance of\u00a0Carrie,\u00a0<\/em>or\u00a0Watership Down,\u00a0<\/em>or any of the thousands of books by authors I revere, then I need to get my ass in gear and start writing\u00a0every single day.\u00a0<\/em>Even if it sucks and no one reads it and I don’t get any feedback or accolades, I need to start to accept that with writing, the destination is<\/i>\u00a0the journey, and that writing for \u00a0me needs to be\u00a0like eating or breathing; something I do for sustenance, and not necessarily for greatness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I originally started this blog\u00a0for the express purpose of forcing myself to write something (hence the name) as often as possible and hopefully with enough frequency to get myself into the habit of writing – a form of conditioning I had hoped would lead to inveterate\u00a0writing and then ultimately, to transitioning into a career as … <\/p>\n

+ Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Not Writing for all the Wrong Reasons http:\/\/wp.me\/p5Ux2I-14","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Ux2I-14","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justwritesomething.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justwritesomething.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justwritesomething.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justwritesomething.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justwritesomething.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/justwritesomething.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justwritesomething.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justwritesomething.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justwritesomething.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}