Once upon a time I thought that I'd like to "be" a writer. That was once upon a time and a very different path from the one I ended up taking. Even so, I now want to start writing again, to find my voice.
Perhaps "want" isn’t the right word, entirely—I feel compelled to start writing again, in the same way I feel compelled to work on my software projects, even though it cuts into the time I could be hanging out, drinking beer, watching the game, playing Fallout 3. I've been resisting it because I didn't know what I wanted to write about. I still don't but realized, after much pain and effort, that it might be easier to just give in and do the damn writing. What’s the worst that can happen? (Don’t answer that.)
Right now I'd be plenty happy just to find a groove and get comfortable. I know (now) that if I wait for the perfect topic or for my life to suddenly become more interesting it will just be too late. Does that make sense? I see opportunities to write all the time, but I don't do it because...well, because I don't write. I don’t have a vehicle for it, and no opportunity seems consequential enough to start one. So here's to starting anyway, and to being inconsequential.
Thousand miles, first step, yada yada yada. I'll start with stuff I know well and which is fairly uncontroversial and hopefully avoid embarrassing myself too badly. I've got a bunch of productivity p0rn I’d like to get out of my head—not exactly state of the art but as good a way as any to get my chops back. For your sake, dear reader, I'll do my best to find some kind of insight, and I won't spend too many words on it.
It is pretentious, of course, to think that anyone gives a damn. And I'll admit to selfishness here: I want to create content that is useful or at least entertaining, but I'm really just enjoying the act of writing.
I’ll finish with a gratuitous Amazon Associates link for The War of Art by Steven Pressfield (a good book, by the way).
We don't tell ourselves, "I'm never going to write my symphony." Instead we say, "I am going to write my symphony; I'm just going to start tomorrow."
And so it begins; I've earned my beer. Oh look, the game's on...
