Writing on Writing 1

“Writing is hard” is a sentence that feels silly to write, like invoking some sort of secret ancient power by saying “poopy doopy ding dong”.

The reasons for writing are as much a part of the difficulty as the actual work or process, in my experience. Why do my thoughts matter, why is it important to record this thought instead of that one, how do I categorize this thought? The thing I’ve focused on the last few years is recognizing when I’m using my imagination to tell a story or make up a scenario. I’ve gotten quite good at immediately writing down or sketching whatever I’m pondering, and usually my analytical brain kicks in and it becomes a thing pretty quickly.

I have tons and tons of these sketch drafts, maybe 50. I might have another few dozen thoughts like the one I’m expressing here that are sort of incubating. But actually converting those to drafts has been slow, partially because the process for the steps that come after have been too scary for me, or because I don’t really feel confident in my work, or because I’m unsure of what to do next.

With drawing/painting, I have an easy outlet through my friends and posting on bluesky to get (some) feedback and refine my process and skills. I’m gonna begin to use this space to post more of my writing in the same way, and hopefully I can get some eyeballs and feedback on some work I’ve been unsure what to do with. Copyright for publshing purposes is annoyingly complex for written works on social media, and posting here instead of eg wordpress or instagram preserves my control of the IP.

I think the hard parts of writing aren’t necessarily the thoughts or even the words- the hard parts are showing people what you wrote, continuing to want to write and showit to people, and continuing to learn and grow like any skill. My best advice for anyone in almost any context: Lower your personal barriers and confront your own inhibitions by Just Posting. The worst thing that can happen is that you’re wrong or bad– and being told you’re wrong or your work is bad is the best thing that can happen to you if you want to learn what’s right and improve. If you’re so clenched up and stressed about being perfect that you can’t even put the thing out there, you’re already setting yourself up to be closed off from valid criticism or advice.

America and Western ideas of the self do a great job of convincing us that there are perfect saints who were born pooping out masterpieces, when there could be nothing further from the truth. Great work comes from great passion, and the only way to nurture that passion is to let it out in the sunshine to grow. Passion isn’t always pretty, but it is by nature genuine and real. If your work is genuine, people will recognize you in it, regardless of the stage of your journey you’re on or how you feel about your present skill.

JUST GO POST. I’m gonna try to live by those words and make a post about every project I work on for a while. I’ll start tomorrow with a recap of my sticker project, and follow it up with some of my short stories as the week goes on. Thanks for stopping by!

-Andy