This morning I wrote for fifteen minutes, fully open and grounded in my inner voice. When I read back what I had written, well frankly, it was shit.
It happens to us all. You set out to write a blog post or an article and the words get mangled and deformed between your heart and your head. The sentences sound stilted and brittle. There is no flow or beauty. Your writing sucks.
You want to give up. It was a stupid idea anyway. There are so many people in the world who write better and more eloquently than you. You may as well leave it to them …
But here is what you do when you feel like your writing is shit. You walk away from the words, do something else and then try again. Maybe not today, but at least tomorrow.
Today my writing practice was shit. Tomorrow it will be better. Maybe tomorrow will be the day when beautiful words and phrases flow from my fingertips without effort. Swings and roundabouts, ups and downs, good and bad — it’s the adventure of life.
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Meditation always seems to set me in the right mind for writing. I sit down and ask the universe to help me share with my audience. The words generally come after that. Otherwise I head out and do something physical.
Great thought about “what do I want to share?” … I think I’ll add that in to my process. Someone said that good writing is about listening rather than speaking … maybe I need to listen more. Thanks Michelle for the brilliant food for thought (pun intended
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I feel like that every other day…hehehe. But then I think just as with everything in life-every project, day, meal, etc will not be perfect. The exact same thing happens to me when I bake the exact same loaf of bread-same recipe every single time-but I’d say only about every 3rd loaf is just right. And that’s kind of how it is with the writing too.
So yes, walk away. Lately I find that after I have done some work in the garden I feel quite inspired to write; hence the nature stuff I’ve come up with, I guess…LOL!
Wanting to be perfect is so crippling – thanks for the reminder that getting it “just right” doesn’t happen every single time.
If it’s any consolation I don’t ever think your writing is shit. Even if you wrote about shit it would still be wonderful
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We are our own worst critic remember.
Your writing is brilliant and so are you. xxxx
Thanks Shelley – it’s nice to feel loved x
I really find that this applies in all life situations. Some days, we’re better at everything than others. Some days, we struggle. Some days, it doesn’t work out very well. And then there are the great days that make the not so great days fade away a bit.
Hopefully, the good days are more frequent than the bad ones.
It can be indeed frustrating. On those days, I just step away from the computer and try doing something else and then come back later.
Sounds like a good idea Sabrina.