The Essence of Writing

Has there ever been a writer who has been completely satisfied with the words he or she has written? Whenever I write something, I like the idea behind it but there’s always something I’m leaving out. It’s just something simple yet completely inexpressible like an invisible weight on the chest when you see something heartbreaking, or the way snowfall makes you feel clean.

You have to have an audience in mind when you write; otherwise the story will not make sense. The bible was written with God as the audience. Dr. Seuss was written with his children as the audience. You have to find an audience before you can tell the story. Your story all depends on who you’re telling it to. The process of writing is the process of visualizing this person, this audience.

The more I write the more I understand that all writing, fact or fiction, is a series of pictures, not words. The job of the writer is not to proselytize about his beliefs in vain efforts to convert the heathens, but is more that of a director. The writer needs to decide what pictures to put in and what pictures to leave out. Non-fiction comes from interviews; sources, primary and secondary.

From those sources, the writer must create a picture and decide which ones to include. Fiction is using only one source – the writer’s imagination – and forming pictures, again deciding which to include and which to remove. So basically, the only difference between fact and fiction is the choice of sources.

Meaningful writing is personal. It grabs the writer and throws all of his/her demons right into their face. It shows them exactly who they are, like it or not. To be a writer, selfish or not, requires great courage. I also think that to face oneself must in some way help others.

The process of writing unlocks the doors to the secret rooms in the mind and heart. If you want to be good at something, ignore what everyone else says about it and just do it a little bit per day. Don’t fight through the times when you think you have nothing to say, nothing to take a picture of, nothing to sing, or nothing to paint. Just do it. If you can’t think of anything for one project, start a new project, or do it just to do it. The important part is that you do a little bit whenever you can.