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Write, Write, Write
One thing that I really struggled with when I became a writer was finding my voice. I had a tendency to be very stiff in my writing. My internal editor was being so strict that I wasn’t able to allow any of my personality to show through. How did I get over that? I wrote, and I wrote, and I wrote some more. The more I wrote, the more my own voice was able to reach the page.
I’ll be honest, when you spend so much time writing to get paid, it’s hard find the time to write for yourself. SEO articles are a nice way to bring in a little extra money, but it’s not necessarily an ideal way to get past your internal editor. The best way I have found is journaling, especially if it’s something private that will allo0w you to experiment with different styles and techniques. I’ve also gotten a lot of good exercise with blogging.
Blogs are a great way to make yourself write a lot more than you might do normally. If there is an audience waiting for your next post, it make you a little more accountable for getting something written. That in itself was a pressure that I had to learn to handle.
I used to feel like everything I posted had to be memorable. I’m more relaxed about it all now. I still want it to be good, but I’m not looking for a Pulitzer either. By worrying too much about the perfection of everything I wrote it made it impossible to get anything written. I was always worried that it wasn’t going to be good enough. That can be very debilitating. Nothing was ever good enough.
The only way to get over that is to write. The more you write, the better your writing will be. You may not ever win any awards, but if you keep working at it, I’ll bet your writing gets pretty good.
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January 12th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
You know I used to think the same thing when I started blogging. One of the many reasons I started blogging was to get into the habit of writing. I wrote badly for a while.
Julia Cameron writes about “bad writing” in her book The Right To Write. She has a chapter titled on bad writing. She says if more people wrote badly they would become better writers. I tend to agree with her although I think I should have saved my bad writing for a paper journal, lol. However, when I do look back at my first year of blogging I can see how much I’ve progressed and I still have a long way to go. I’m enjoying the adventure.
I’m trying to get back into the habit of writing longhand. I picked up a really nice book this morning, and I will end my evenings writing whatever comes to mind.
My internal editor is strict also at times it doesn’t want the real writer to breathe. I remind myself that it is ok to relax and just write.
January 12th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
It takes a lot of effort to initially get past listening to your internal editor. My next step is to stop correcting myself while I’m writing. It lasways breaks my train of thought. I would be better finishing what I am writing, and then going back to correct, but I become so obsessed with the mistakes that I can’t go on. Oh well, one step at a time I guess.
I’ve never had much luck with paper journals. I seem to be better at starting the process than seeing it through. I have always had much better luck with a word processor.
January 13th, 2008 at 4:11 am
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