How to Show Up and Write

Posted by Jason Better on Oct 15, 2010 7:07 pm

Source : Copyblogger.com | Author: Taylor Lindstrom

Ask any writer how to write, and they will tell you, logically enough: Write.

Write every day. Write at the same time. Write for hours. Write for 20 minutes. Just show up and write.

You’ve heard this advice before and you haven’t taken it yet.

You meant to. But you haven’t.

This is not entirely your fault, because while the advice is not complicated, it’s nearly impossible to follow.

Mostly because it’s way too simple.

Don’t get me wrong. We love simplicity. Simplicity is great and useful when you want practical steps to solve a problem.

Simplicity is lousy when what you really want is a reason for not doing something.

Why there’s such a thing as “too simple”

A friend of mine has been asking me for years to run marathons with her, so I started asking marathoners for their stories on training and running.

I have favorites. They usually involve blood.

Why? Because marathon running scares me. I don’t want to do it, not really.

When someone tells me a story about collapsing from dehydration halfway up a mountain and having to be hospitalized, it makes marathon running sound difficult. Complicated. Terrifying. With dire consequences for getting it wrong. It gives me a fantastic reason for not doing it.

Show up. Run.

That’s too simple. That’s the kind of simplicity we love to hate.

Why we like to hear that writing is difficult

Anne Lamott wrote a book on writing, Bird by Bird.

In the book, her students ask her how to become writers, and she describes the writing process in terms that would not be out of place in a psych ward. She mentions, in no particular order, banshees, drunken monkeys, and Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

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