Day fourteen

In thinking of a topic for today's post, I was reminded of a writing exercise I used to do when I was a senior in high school. I've find it to be a surprisingly effective way for me to actually sit down and begin writing something.

About once a week or so, my government class teacher would have us write journal entries for about fifteen minutes or so. We could write whatever we wanted, which I found rather difficult. If I were given a topic, I could always come up with something that was at least passable. If left to myself, I would often be stumped to come up with anything. One day, probably because I was in a bad mood, I began to write about having nothing to write about. I spitballed a couple of paragraphs about how I found it difficult to write extemporaneously. Surprisingly, my teacher accepted it, if only because it was an attempt at writing. I did it a few times, and each time my teacher accepted it.

There have been a couple of posts here that have been the result of that sort of exercise. Part of it is working to keep up with writing daily. Part of it is the reluctance to just publish anything, which I sort of did yesterday. I don't really want to generate content that just functions as space filler between more interesting items.

So how does it work? Just start writing. Don't worry about it being good at first, because as you do more of it, you will improve. Besides, you can always edit. Anytime I sit down to write something, at least once I will type out an entire sentence, find that I'm not happy with it, and will rewrite it; this very sentence, for example. The ability of self-edit is a valuable skill to cultivate as a writer.

How do you keep writing? Write about what interests you, especially if you're doing something like this wher you're not beholden to anyone but yourself. If you're not interested in the topic about which you're writing, it will come through in your work, and it will be just as uninteresting for your audience to read. If you're interested, you can capture the interest of your readers.

I should wrap this up, since while I've improved as a writer, I've still not quite figured out how to write good endings.