Inspiration - Motivation · Writing

Unlearning…

One poor writing habit that I am working hard at unlearning is the habit of waiting until I have something profound to talk/write about and waiting until the feeling to write grips me before I do so.

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Waiting for such fine moments emanates from that underlying need for control and perfection, which is basically impossible. There is no right time and no other time can be righter than now. This scenario applies to millions of us who sit around waiting for the right partner, waiting for the right job to pop out of the woodworks and offer itself, waiting for the right time to exercise, to adjust our lifestyle, to start that course we are interested in, to start travelling, waiting, waiting, endlessly waiting…

We don’t have 100 years left on this earth to get around to doing those things we want to do and sometimes, I wonder why we are quick to get upset over minor delays that will save us not more than 2 minutes, yet keep waiting for the right time and are reluctant to make those changes that impact our lives more?

Time passes so fast, this much we know, and we can never, ever get back those days spent waiting unnecessarily. Waiting for writing inspiration is a fool’s game because inspiration can be slippery and may never come in expected ways. The longer you spend waiting for the writing genie to turn up, the further it slips away. I know that staying consistent is the key and that when we start writing regularly, with or without inspiration, inspiration eventually finds us between those words and sentences that we manage to squeeze out.

Poetry/Poems · Writing

She Said, I Said…

Writing

She said to me.
there’s a storm brewing in my soul,
and chaos sits in the pit of my stomach

and I said to her,
grab the sails and ride the treacherous wind,
write up a storm and smash chaos with your words.

©

Jacqueline

Writing

Write Garbage, Edit Brilliantly! ….Writer’s Quote Wednesday

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If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write.
– Somerset Maugham

It is perfectly okay to write garbage—as long as you edit brilliantly.
– C. J. Cherryh

The above quotes repeats in my head when I think of my writing and encourages me to trudge along.

Someone once asked me how I decided that I am writer and my simple response that I have lots of stories to tell which left a blank look on her face made me feel as if I spoke Greek. Now and again, her blank face surfaces in my memory and I begin to question myself.

When I am struggling to put down the riotous thoughts in my head into a readable format, the question rises again and sometimes, a tiny voice of doubt tells me, ‘YOU ARE A FRAUD!’ WRITER YOU ARE NOT!

I have learnt to slap and shut the impish voice down, to go ahead and scribble my nonsense and leave it at that.

Well, seeing such quotes from established authors does tickle my fancy bone, and I have come to realize that there is no perfect writer. We  just write that which needs to be written and leave it at that.

© Jacqueline Oby-Ikocha – Girl writer 😉

Written for Writer’s quote Wednesday.