Vinnie's Pages

A Time for Singing

There’s a time for everything, even a time for singing.

Even when your heart’s not in it.

Even when your voice falters and cracks.

Even when it’s hard to breathe.

Even when no one is listening.

Even when you can’t remember the words or reach all the notes.

 

Sometimes the soul must voice its desire and its offering, and you must open your lips and allow the truth to escape your hunched-over, angry, frightened self. Sometimes words need to fly out and go where they will.

 

Sometimes the joy manifests only after the sound barrier has been broken.

 

So I will open my mouth, Lord—yes, I’ll do it. I’ll reach out my arms and turn my palms upward and reel the syllables from way down in the bottom and up through a sorrowful throat and clenched teeth. I’ll spin out the tones, the tunes, the stuff that is real melody after all.

 

Maybe today is your time for singing, too. Are you brave? Does life matter to you? Can you be a little feisty, and roar without apology?

 

The thing about your voice is, no one will ever come looking for it. No one will run across it while they’re out shopping or seeking their fortune.

 

And, unless someone comes along who is merciful enough, or cruel enough, no one will ever seduce those lovely sounds from you. Because the voice is quite a personal thing, and mostly hidden. It’s up to you to form the vibrations, to let the air rush in.

 

Right next to you, quieter than breath, a majestic angel lingers, leans in, and murmurs to you what cries out so brightly the heavens shudder:

 

"Please . . . sing!"

 

 

Copyright © 2009 Vinita Hampton Wright

 

Dare to Tap the Well

I confess that sometimes I sit down to write, and I wonder if any words will come today—or ever again. There’s the fear, usually unspoken if acknowledged at all, that the creative well will run dry. This is why a blank page or empty computer screen can elicit so much anxiety.

 

In my writing workshops I offer the image of a well as a picture of the writer’s soul. It’s that deep down place in which all the stuff of life collects, where the stories begin to form, and where the truth eventually bubbles to the surface. And, really, it never runs dry—ever. But at times we are not successful in tapping its depths.

 

Unless a person is traumatized or otherwise prevented from making real connection with her own life, she can tap the well without much trouble and through various means. Some of them are so simple we are surprised when they work. Some means work better than others on a given day, which is why we should do our best to use all of them.

 

Memory can nearly always trigger a chain reaction. Try to remember something basic, such as the person of your childhood who was the funniest or the scariest. Before you know it, you’re pulling up all sorts of memories, some of them barely connected to the original question.

 

Emotion works well, too. Allow yourself to connect with what makes you anxious or excited or frightened or blissful, and the well will begin to burble away.

 

The five senses are important to good writing, and they’re also critical to exploring the well. Get away from your favored sense, such as sight, and concentrate on textures or smells for awhile.

 

Not everyone works easily with dreams, but sometimes dream life can bring important or interesting material with it. So learn to work with your dreams a bit more.

 

Desires and fears already determine much of what you do and say; you may as well get acquainted with what you truly want and with the fears that make up so much subconscious motivation. Desires and fears are key to good fiction characters, by the way.

 

When the blank page becomes intimidating and you’re beginning to doubt yourself, go back to the basics: your emotions, your memories, the way you sensually experience the world, the dream that woke you up at 3 a.m., the thing you long for, and the thing you dread.

 

Stop reading now, and get back to that page!

 

Copyright © 2009 Vinita Hampton Wright

A Week in the Mountains

What happens when you take writers of different experience levels and give them imaginative exercises that require writing truthfully and now? Well, usually they do write, and nearly always they surprise themselves. The key to writing simply is to do it.

I spent nearly a week in Orkney Springs, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley, at the Shrine Mont retreat center of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia. I was the writing instructor, and my colleagues included instructors in digital photography, poetry, sketching, and various modes of painting. Twenty-nine retreatants wandered the lush grounds and tapped their creativity, with some fear and trembling but with true grit as well. They did not disappoint their teachers, and I trust they did not disappoint themselves.

Of course it helps to be in beautiful surroundings. And it helps to hang out with your own tribe for awhile--other people who understand your need to find some space for yourself in which to spill out your soul in color, shape, and syllable. It helps that others are doing the cooking and the cleaning, that you're not responsible to take care of spouse, kids, and pets for a few days.

But the key to it all is the willingness to take a chance and put yourself to work. This means that all the wonder and suffering and gladness that's been bubbling around inside will make its way to the surface--and then you must deal with it. This means that you must learn to trust yourself a little more. It means that you must love and nurture your own life as a good and tender thing. Also, you must claim the power that is yours, that waits for permission to speak and to move.

All of you artists are stunning--I hope you know that. Your vision and love of beauty will change the world, beginning with the very private circle in which you move. I know that my life is already better, for the time spent with you.

Special thanks to my writers for the week--Betsy, Becky, and Linda. I give thanks for your gifts, your stories, your presence.

Writing and Significance

I try to put up one post each week about writing and another post aimed more at social and spiritual concerns. This post brings all of that together, not because I planned it that way but because my struggle lies at those intersections.

 

In a life that I hope becomes more Christ-like as the years go by, the place and purpose of my writing slips and slides. In the professional realm of the written word, the point is to be read, to be reviewed positively, to be known well enough that your work can become a commodity. To write well is to be not only accomplished at the craft but savvy at marketing. To be a professional writer is to care about marketing, about trends and numbers, if only for the sake of self-preservation.

 

There are various ways to go about this, depending on your personality. Some people are born pragmatists; they figure out what their gifts and resources are and then they strategize about how to hook up those gifts and resources to earned income. They become successful free-lance writers, whether as journalists and columnists or as authors of genres that are hot, such as mystery, crime thriller, or romance.

 

Other writers must always write what is important to them, what is simmering in their bones and cannot be compromised. The more gifted and focused of these people write material that matters to the rest of us—the memoir that speaks for a generation, the biography that delivers to us the fuller portrait of a hero, the novel that captures an archetypal dream or struggle, the nonfiction analysis of a primary grievance within the culture.

 

Most of us who write, whether by cool strategy or feverish creativity, fall between the successful freelancers and the bestsellers; we do not make loads of money from our work. Yet, because writing is our gift, we continue to be drawn to it, and our writing fills in the cracks of an already full and busy life. We make a little money, we even snag some good reviews. And a few readers let us know that we’ve done a good thing, a helpful and important thing. This makes the effort worthwhile.

 

Because, ultimately, writing is a way to create significance.

 

Writing pulls together events, people, feelings, and outcomes to form a story, and the story, if it is successful, provides a narration of our lives that makes sense to us. This story has a beginning, middle, and end. It makes logical connections between disparate pieces. It helps us place our personal plots within the larger social drama.

 

As a writer with a spiritual bent, my hope is to write stories—fiction or nonfiction—that give people a vocabulary for their real experience. I hope to aid people as they try to face themselves and others with integrity and compassion. I aim to wake up readers so that they recognize the Divine that is right there with them. For me, writing must be an act of love.

 

But this attitude toward the craft can become bruised and misshapen when the goal of putting words together shifts from the general good to personal reputation. How often do I feel a stab when another writer is recognized for having published in a prestigious magazine or newspaper, or has won a literary award (this is especially true if the writer is years younger than I am, or if she has accomplished this with a first book)? Then what I really want is to write better, to become more clever and artistic, to become a significant voice. The desire has devolved into hunger after my own significance.

 

Which, I have to say, is not what my Christian faith is about. Jesus turned everything around. To be great I must become least. Rather than wielding power over others, I am to serve them. In trying to hang onto my life—my wealth, name, significance—I will lose everything that is truly important. It’s not about writing because I’m important or have a special talent; it’s about loving the world by way of words. In pouring out phrases and sentences, I should be pouring out my life in some respect—whatever wisdom I’ve accrued or the dream that is taking shape that may just be good enough to share.

 

As for the writing that is meaningful to me: it’s my responsibility to assess how meaningful it might be to others. Some significance is self-contained and has little usefulness outside my own room. If I am wise and compassionate, I will not foist it upon other people.

 

I hope you do not feel that this piece has been foisted upon you. My suspicion is that most writers of faith have to review their motives and energies from time to time. Perhaps this posting will help you do that. Peace, and blessings upon your gifts.

 

Copyright © 2009 Vinita Hampton Wright

Be Willing to Be Wasteful

 

If you place a really high value on productivity and efficiency, then please, don’t try to be a writer.

 

Art of any kind is shamelessly wasteful. That’s because the Ultimate Artist is shamelessly wasteful—if you don’t believe me, spend a little time with nature. I mean, do peony blossoms really need to be so gigantic? Must apple trees drop so many tons of gorgeous fruit that just rots back into the ground? I realize it provides fertilizer and food for birds and bugs, but come on. And have you watched any documentaries about how many different kinds of sea life exist—much of it never even witnessed by human beings? Did you ever wonder about why millions of wildflowers should pop up and bloom a day or two, then disappear—again, most of them without anyone having gazed upon them or praised their beauty?

 

Well, we could find many examples of God’s wastefulness, but back to the point—if you’re not willing to be wasteful, then please be an accountant or one of those consultants who helps companies raise their level of efficiency. But do not attempt to paint or sculpt or compose music or pen poems or give birth to novels. You will drive yourself crazy and drive many innocent people crazy along with you.

 

A writer writes a lot of stuff that will never get published—or used in any way. I’ve been fortunate enough to have published several books. But there’s enough unpublished material stored away on the hard drive to fill several other books. Frankly, some of the unpublished material is good enough to be published, in my opinion. But the time wasn’t right, or I hit the wave of popular interest too late, or I’m just not sexy enough, or something. So I spent much time on work that no one will ever read. Yes, that stings. And yes, it’s worth having written it, despite the disappointment.

 

Also, in every finished work there are all the bits and pieces—in some cases entire scenes or chapters—that I end up cutting from the finished work. In most cases, I’ll never be able to use those pieces in anything else. However, I usually keep the better-written bits because a rejected paragraph of one work may just give me the key sentence for a paragraph in another work entirely. You just never know. The irritating part of this is that I’ve got to figure out some way to file all the unused pieces.

 

Then there’s all the completely unpublishable material I’ve written—badly shaped arguments, poorly developed characters, plotless stories, ho-hum scenes, self-conscious memoir. I spent a good bit of time writing that stuff, too, and I don’t even have the satisfaction of knowing that it’s good, because it’s not.

 

But here’s the big principle you must take away from this blogpost: In order to get to the good writing, you’ve got to do the mediocre writing, the bad writing, and even the writing that embarrasses you so much that you delete it rather than risk anyone ever tracing it back to you.

 

Art requires a lot of time doing what appears to be nothing. I walk a lot when something is in the early stages. I carry a journal but don’t write in it. I may not even be thinking about the writing project directly; still, I need to do the wandering that helps it form.  I know one artist who, when she worked for a design firm, attracted the boss’s displeasure because he’d find her staring out the window. She knew she was working, but he thought she was wasting time. She didn’t work there long—she quit and created her own company. She was wise enough to value wastefulness.

 

Don’t be surprised if you plan a “writing weekend” during which you expect to “get a lot done,” only to realize at the end of it that you weren’t very productive at all. You fixed many snacks and consumed multiple cups of coffee. You started and stopped, started and stopped work on your project. You doodled about it, and maybe you posted various wistful or frustrated comments about it on Facebook or on your blog. But you did not write the thousands of words you had hoped to write.

 

What probably happened was that you processed material at the top of your consciousness that needed to be dealt with and tossed. That takes time. So there went the weekend. The fact is, all that wasted time was not as wasted as you think. Yes, you probably went online too many times and committed other forms of procrastination. But your process needed time to churn without going much of anywhere. You’ll probably discover that, back into your daily schedule, you’ll be able to shift into writing gear more quickly for having wasted time during the retreat that was supposed to produce so much writing.

 

So, be willing to be wasteful. Gaze out the window. Go for a walk. Go see a movie, if that’s what primes your pump (the subject of a future post). Write total crap until it starts turning into something you like. Then keep writing the stuff you like until it can be transformed into what other folks might like as well. Eventually, this project might just evolve into something you get paid for!

 

If you find these writing articles helpful, you’ll probably benefit from my book on the creative process: The Soul Tells a Story. Go to the Book List page of www.vinitahamptonwright.com which will link you to amazon.com

To Fireworks and Freedom

I choose to celebrate July 4^th because I know I didn’t get here on my own. I was born into a situation that makes me one of the world’s richest and most free human beings. My parents were born into it, too, even my grandparents, although they didn’t feel so rich and free, given what the Great Depression put them through. Still, they were free enough to travel from Kansas to Illinois to California in search of work back then. That’s a freedom of sorts.

 

My great-grandparents, as far as I know, were born on American soil. On both sides of the family, the tree has lost branches—missing fathers, parents who left their small children with a family in Kansas and continued on in their covered wagon, never to return. I have no idea who my distant relatives might be.

 

I do know that my father’s great-grandparents came over from England in the late 1800s. I’m reasonably sure that no one on either side of the family was part of any European aristocracy—or if they were, they lost their money before any of it could trickle down to us descendants. Some of our people fought in the Civil War alongside Ulysses S. Grant, but, to my knowledge, no one fought in the Revolutionary War.

 

Yet here I am. My forebears landed here whenever they landed here, and they worked hard and bought property and reared children. A great-grandfather died of coal-mine-related illness, and a grandfather was partially crippled by polio. My father held a blue-collar job until diabetes took him at age fifty-seven. The women were stronger, as women often are, and my history is filled with widows old and wise.

 

But we’re here, in America. Both grandmas worked in ammunitions factories at one time. During war-time, the women filled the factories, and they worked hard, but they could earn a living while their men were away at war. Today our young men and women go off to war; they do this of their own will, are not forced into service by government decree. The rest of us are free to look for our livelihoods and to take care of our families as best we can.

 

But we are here, in America. We suffer from illness and crime and poverty and injustice. But I can say whatever I like about those who hold office. I can criticize the government—I can even start an e-mail campaign to have someone impeached, for heaven’s sake! I can do this, because I was born in the United States of America.

 

I can scheme and plan and come up with any number of perfectly legal ways to attend college or grad school, to purchase a home or a car, to start my own business.

 

And I can read about what is happening out in the world—through newspapers, alternative magazines, the Internet. I can pick up a phone and call someone in another country. I can keep my money in a bank and get to it when I need it.

 

Anyone who knows me at all will tell you just how much I criticize government in this country and just how little I trust corporate America. There’s a hell of a lot that’s wrong here, and I will screech about it until things get better.

 

But I will never forget that I am here, in the United States of America. I can speak and dream and learn and work. If I get into trouble, I can also get attorneys to help me. If I am in danger, most likely some form of law enforcement will show up and protect me or an ambulance will transport me to safety and help. If I’m down on my luck, any number of charitable organizations will help me find food and shelter. And I can walk into a church somewhere and find another human being who will pray with me. We don’t have to whisper our prayers, either. We can stand out on the street and pray them right out loud if we want.

 

I hate war, I really do. I know that this country had a very bloody birth and that people all over this planet at this very moment are fighting other bloody battles. Some of those people are trying to get the freedom I experienced before I was old enough to walk or talk. They were not born into it, and for some of them freedom is a dream they will die with.

 

I hope that in this next century we will finally learn that warfare is obsolete and that people will be freed not through bloodshed but through community and collaboration. I hope that the national anthem for the next country set free won’t have anything in it about bombs bursting in air.

 

But I must celebrate July 4^th because—however the freedom was accomplished—it was mine on the day I arrived in this world. This freedom shaped my family and my small hometown in Kansas. This freedom has shaped me, and I am a richer, better person for having known it this half-century I have lived.

Say Yes to Your Gift

Maybe you want to write. In fact, you long to be a writer. You have lots of talent and even more inspiration. But until you say yes to your gift, your longing will go unfulfilled.

 

Saying yes to your gift means that you own it. Drop the false modesty, okay? If you have a way with words, you probably can’t take much credit for it—it came to you through heredity, background, and the resources of your particular life. So it’s not being egotistical or vain to admit that you have this gift.

 

Saying yes to your gift means that now you will take responsibility for its development. Having a way with words isn’t good enough unless you’re a flat-out genius--and even a genius values learning and improving. Writing is a craft, and your gift needs to be developed. You need to learn the craft and practice it. This is your job. If you don’t develop your craft, then your gift will be wasted because it will never be truly fruitful in the world.

 

Saying yes to your gift means that you will make more room for it in your life. Maybe you have a house full of children and a spouse who is only partially employed. You have to work for a living. So you can’t afford a week-long workshop/retreat to help your gift. You can’t even give this gift an hour or two per day. But you can give it something. Maybe it’s late at night or early in the morning; maybe it’s a portion of your Saturday—a portion that ordinarily would go to housework. So give up your need to have an immaculate house. Or give up some television. Do what you can.

 

Saying yes to your gift means that you deem it an important part of your life. This is something you will learn to nurture and respect. This gift will teach you things, will give you comfort sometimes, will make you wiser. We’re not talking about a hobby to help you pass the time. This is a characteristic of your very soul, and the Good Lord gave you this gift in order to accomplish some wonder in life.

 

Saying yes will cost you—but that’s for another blog post. For now, consider your gift(s). What do you think of them, really? And will you give them more than a passing excitement? Will you say yes?

Girls, Girls, Girls

Thanks to one of my stepsons, I am grandma to girls, and one of them is a teenager now. Since she was small, she has spent time every summer here in Chicago with Jim and me. For almost as long as she’s been doing this, we’ve been friends and neighbors with a family whose daughter was close to the age of our granddaughter. They hit it off so well that we schedule our granddaughter’s visit so that the girls can spend that week together.  Which means that for nearly a decade Jim and I have hosted these two girls during the summer. They are now good friends, and I suspect that our granddaughter longs for Chicago more to see her friend than to see us old people. But we don’t mind. I never had children, and both my sisters had sons. Now that my nephew is father to a baby girl, the family is quite delirious. There’s something about a girl that makes us especially giddy. They’re sort of magical, and they bring us gifts.

 

What are the gifts of girl-ness?

 

Movement. I’m talkin’ ‘bout those girly moves, the kind that happen only at a certain time of life. There’s the sway of hips that have recently found their contours. There’s the quirky ballet of arms and legs that only yesterday were little-girl arms and legs but now have grown long and strong and more graceful by the day.

Atmosphere. A small child will express intense happiness or displeasure without much nuance. But watching a young girl’s face is like contemplating the ocean. So many shades of emotion, so many meanings in the eyes—and all of it changes constantly, wave upon glittering, thunderous wave.

Language. They talk, they whisper, they sing, they chant, they yell, they screech. Girls play with words and with the sounds of their own voices. Communication is never-ending and it’s nearly always important. Also, girls know the lyrics (and the moves) to every song they like, and they like a LOT of songs.

Laughter. They laugh at everything and everybody, especially at adults who are angry about something. I was happy to learn that my grumpiness provided them with so much free entertainment and the excuse to giggle and snort and cackle. And shriek. Girls laugh because laughing is fun. If there’s no reason to laugh, they look at each other intently until someone breaks, and then the cackling starts all over again.

Morality. Yes, I wrote that word on purpose. Young girls are making up their minds about a lot of things. They want a philosophical system that serves them well. They have no problem with good/bad and right/wrong as long as they agree with the categories. They have OPINIONS about what kinds of guys are jerks or about what clothes look good on a person. They have closets full of stories about friends, parents, siblings, teachers, or celebrities who have really screwed up. Although girls often don’t have the wisdom that life experience brings, generally they are equipped with good bullshit detectors and aren’t afraid to use them.

Romance. Young girls soon learn what it means to be infatuated, to feel all crazy because boys are around. They are forever on the lookout for “hot guys,” and any activity or conversation can be disrupted on the instant when such a person walks by. To girls, dreaming of love is an art form. Note of caution: don’t try to talk them down from this. Disgruntled, love-burned grown-ups should just keep quiet and let the girls revel in the imagined loves and lives that may seem completely implausible to the rest of us.

Energy. Did I tell you we spent a week with girls? I am grateful that they are old enough now to put themselves to bed—if they make it to bed at all. I’m grateful that they can turn on the oven and bake their own pizza rolls or chocolate chip cookies at midnight if they want. The old man and me, we just say goodnight and go to bed, knowing that we’ll have plenty of time for a leisurely coffee in the morning, because although girls have loads of energy, they sleep late after watching two or three movies in a row and talking about everything that’s important.

 

Young girls can be the most astounding people on earth. Not only do they have great energy, but they also possess the wherewithal to believe that all sorts of things are possible. In Days of Deepening Friendship I mention this in a segment about Mary of Nazareth and her visit from the angel Gabriel.

 “I think the Lord chose a young girl for this mission because a girl in the fervor of adolescence is able to harbor dreams and goals that border on the absurd. A girl just coming into her womanhood is open enough and feisty enough to stand there and talk to an angel, even question the information (“So, how will this happen if I’ve never had sex??”). And a young woman who is convinced that divine love has called upon her help—well, she just can’t be stopped. She’s stubborn and resilient and more optimistic than people who have become sensible and set in their ways. Mary’s story is a reminder of how miraculous the teenage years can be. We become distracted by the mood swings and silences and fits of rebellion and questionable friends, but we forget how a girl’s soul can open up and how willing she can become when she understands that God is truly interested in her life, her choices, and her future.”

 

So let’s celebrate our girls. Let’s take them shopping and listen to their music and be seduced by their laughter. Let’s not be so fretful and grumpy; this time is short and we don’t want to miss the wonder of beauty waking up and of singular worldviews forming. If we want them to become extraordinary women, then we must love the girls they are now. We must learn to enjoy their loudness and their disorganization, their drama and their dreams.

 

Copyright  © 2009 Vinita Hampton Wright

Give Yourself Permission

I have led numerous writers’ workshops and retreats over the past several years, and one issue surfaces consistently. Many people are waiting for someone to give them permission to write. Something prevents their free engagement in the simple act of putting words together.

 

My answer to this simple: Give yourself permission to write. And while you’re at it, give yourself permission to—

 

• write just because you want to. No glorious purpose is necessary. No practical purpose, either.
• write whatever you want to write. Write about your kids or pets. Write poetry. Write a screenplay. Write your grandfather’s life story. Write a sloppy romance. Write a memoir.
• write without expectations. You don’t need to accomplish anything. And, unless you are in fact a trained and persistent writer, you’re wise to write without expectation of getting published—because professional writing is a craft and it usually takes much experience and hard work.
• write freely and wastefully. Any artistic endeavor involves waste. You’ll write stuff and delete it. You may write entire scenes and stories and pitch them later. You’ll probably go off in the wrong direction and have to start all over. If you can’t waste time, energy, and paper/computer memory, then please, don’t write.
• call yourself a writer—or not. Because we’ve overly romanticized writers, then often when you identify yourself as such, people think you’re being pretentious. I’ve been a writer for years, but when a new acquaintance asks what I do, I defer to my other identity and say I’m an editor. That’s easier and less painful than enduring the awkward silence or the, “I see . . .” or having to answer the next ten questions, such as, “Really, what have you published?” or, if you have published, then, “Have I seen that in Borders?” Like me, you may want to call yourself a writer privately and to a few trusted friends and leave it at that.
• embrace the gifts you have. You may have a talent for writing, but the talent won’t develop by itself. At some point you have to own up to being talented and get on with it.
• make writing a bigger priority. If this is a gift, or a desire, or just the thing you need to do now, then honor this urge and make space and time for writing. Do it without apology.
• write without explaining it to anyone. People either get artistic urges or they don’t. Please don’t waste energy on the people who don’t get you. And to those who do, be gracious and appreciative.
• write in obscurity. The celebrity culture we live in pressures us to be outstanding and famous in all we do. You don’t have to make a name for yourself or win any awards.
• write badly. If you can’t allow yourself to write badly, you’ll never get any better at it. This gets in the way of so many people who might otherwise develop their gifts. Even good writers do bad writing. Sometimes we write pages and pages of mediocrity in order to arrive at that one paragraph of miraculous beauty.
• write yourself. You may as well give yourself permission to write yourself, because you’ll end up writing yourself anyway. Your particular mixture of history, neuroses, nagging personal issues, and so on, will pop up in your work all the time. You have to let that happen. You can always edit out what’s useless to the work itself. But one thing art forces you to do is to face yourself.
• enjoy the act for itself alone. We were created to take joy in creating. When you finish a poem, rejoice and be happy. Don’t worry about its quality—that’s not the point for now. Take joy in the fact that you have engaged in something you love.

 

Copyright © Vinita Hampton Wright, 2009

Don't Wait to Start

The writing life does not hunt you down, hit you over the head, drag you to a writing cave, and compel you into a life of feverish creativity. The writing life does not grow out of longing, passivity, or whining. It begins when you begin—simple as that. On the day you put words on a page or a computer screen, your writing life has become present-tense. So please, stop waiting around.

 

·         Don’t wait until you have plenty of time, because you probably never will.

·         Don’t wait until you are well prepared, because no one is well prepared to write. The writing itself prepares you to keep writing. Being proficient at grammar, punctuation, spelling, and so forth will prepare you to construct language, but only writing prepares you to write.

·         Don’t wait until your relationships are healthier and less disruptive; where do you expect to get your characters anyway?

·         Don’t wait until you feel certain that you have the gifts of a writer. Our certainty of such gifts is not an accurate indicator. Some people who are quite gifted do not recognize it. And some people who are very certain they are gifted are in fact delusional about their abilities.

·         Don’t wait until you feel inspired. Inspiration can be a stimulating way to get started, but the practice of writing will generate its own inspiration—and will be much more dependable.

·         Don’t wait until you are assured of some reward, whether money, recognition, or satisfaction. The writing life must be its own reward, simply because other rewards come and go and often aren’t there at all.

·         Don’t wait until your life isn’t so chaotic. What do you expect to write about, anyway?

·         Don’t wait until you have the perfect place in which to write; the writing life will make itself at home anywhere if you give it permission to be at home in you.

·         Don’t wait until you have the bestseller-of-an-idea. Aiming to write a bestseller is not the same as living the writing life. No one has the formula for a bestseller, although lots of people will claim to have that very secret. When you put pressure on yourself to write a bestseller, that can pretty much paralyze what could have been a decent writing life.

·         Don’t wait until others see the value in what you’re trying to do. Support is a great gift but often we have to start—and persevere—without it.

·         Don’t wait until your deep personal issues are worked out—what do you expect to write about anyway?

·         Don’t wait until the world asks to hear from you. The world won’t even know you are gifted and articulate until you embrace the writing life.

·         Don’t wait until you are more courageous and confident. Those qualities will develop as you own your gift and follow where it leads.

 

So, close this page now and get started.

 Vinita Hampton Wright © 2009