Writer's Wednesday: Taking the First Step in Regaining Writing Momentum

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This shouldn't come as a surprise to most people who know me, but I took a huge step today that I think shows progress in my abilities and confidence in myself. I submitted two pieces to two different anthologies. Both are darker in nature, and a few people I know and trust as well as the people who edited them received it very well (by the way, if you're looking for a great editor, you should check out MEKincade—Just leave appointment times for me).

So, how did we get here, after all this time I threatened to walk away from it all and never pick up a keyboard/pencil/paper again?

Regaining Faith in Writing

This isn't about having the faith to type one word after another, putting punctuation somewhere in the line, and holding it out for people to read. No, this was about ripping apart everything I thought I knew about writing and examining it as someone who was an outside observer. There were steps I discovered, flaws I knew I had, and an answer that became very clear once I got over the internal objections and the bad habits.

Breaking the Bad Writing Habits

There are times when writers have habits built up to excuse the flaws they have. Often we point to novels and other familiar tomes when we say, "See? This author did it and it is on a dead tree!"

Just because they did it that way doesn't mean it is right, nor did they know they were doing it in the first place. In fact, if they were approached by that very same flaw with a new way to view it, they would jettison it as well.

So many people tell young writers and authors to read in the genre they want to write in, absorb every word, and digest it into their own written piece.

Stop that.

Doing this is akin to someone pulling out a roll of blueprints, handing them over to someone, and expecting them to pour concrete or dig a hole for plants without knowledge on how to read the plans. It's great that you might glean a shred of understanding ("Oh, that squiggly line means a palm tree!"), but without more study and knowledge, you'll never get to the level you want in writing without learning about the structure first.

The Flaws of a Bad Writing Habit

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'll point out my biggest flaw and one I can point out with some of the larger names right now in the writing industry: Having an ending to a story.

There was a part of me that wanted to be artistic in what I wrote. Heck, I even fought people on the concept of endings, about how they are supposed to be ambiguous and unfulfilling because that is how life is for most of us. We never have the clean resolutions.

That's where I was wrong.

This isn't about mimicking life and all its aspects. It's about reflecting life and the need to escape it, even for one minute. This is where the great masters have applied their trade and their devoted fans stretch across race, creed, time, and status. They give the resolution to a great story to give closure to someone trying to escape their life, and draw them in for the next time they might dangle the next story out there.

Examining Writing as an Outsider

When I walked away from it all for a few months, I started digging into some of the great blogs and books out there that would help me see this from a different point of view. Some were encouraging, others were scathing, and even a few might make me cry (if I weren't crying already from disappointment myself).

Then other areas opened, methods of dealing with the personal disappointment and anxiety, ways to process the thoughts bubbling in my brain and see that they weren't really about my desires, but reflecting my fears about taking the next step, getting out there and failing at writing, and even accepting that I could walk away from it all, but knowing that I couldn't.

Many writers will tell you the same thing: It's in our blood.

However, I'll put it another way. Have you ever tried being normal when a thousand characters are yelling at you in your mind about walking away?

Yeah, try being mostly sane with that little nervous tick.

So, are you willing to accept your writing flaw?

Will you put aside the pride and connection with your work to see what is really holding you back? Are you ready to walk away from it all and never return? What would you do in this situation? Do you think there's a certain level of insanity or growth needed to do all this?

Let me know in the comments below. I'd love to have a dialogue with you about this.