The Art Of Writing
Although only 50 days have elapsed thus far, how many great people do you know have already given up on themselves, thrown in the proverbial towel, abandoned their visions, and walked away from their forgotten dreams feeling defeated? Challenging myself to keep getting up and showing up everyday even when I didn’t feel like pushing past the pain gives birth to discipline and strengthens character. Challenging myself to digging deeper inside the cluttered place where secrets hide has helped me in so many other unexplored, untapped, and unchartered areas of my ever evolving life.
The insight and personal growth the truth produces inspires you to explore new things in creative ways never before seen, to risk taking chances we avoided before because we were told to “play it safe.” As a creative person, there’s no such thing as playing it safe if you know yourself intimately enough to risk stepping “outside the box” somebody else drew because that’s all they knew. In the early 90’s my artistic style of photography was rejected by the status quo. I broke all the established rules and intentionally exceeded the limits set by film manufacturers just to see what would happen. Nobody died or cried because I dared to dance to the beat of a different drummer.
Right now, mastering the art of writing is just as much fun as mastering the art of photography. As you know, creating any form of art from scratch is a messy process. Watching my 2 1/2 year old daughter at play inspires me to do the same with this site, play with it, have fun with it, love messing with it. But most of all, just enjoy doing it whatever that it may be for that particular day. As grown folk, it saddens me that we’ve forgotten how to play and how to just have fun while mastering the art of our chosen professions. Making money appears to matter more now than making merry. Do any of the executives who run major corporations ever ponder the possibilities of what could happen if they let their employees have so much fun that they “whistle” while they practice their excellence? I hope so.
Now that I’ve reached that age when grown folk’s eyesight begins to change, the art of writing has challenged me to experiment with the power of the pen by creating attention grabbing, soul stirring mental images with words instead of creating photographic images with film. I birthed this site not knowing where I was going to end up. The first 31 days was about keeping a personal promise to myself to get up and show up everyday until I knew what direction to take while staring at a blank computer screen. But the primary goal of this site had an eternal purpose that will be unveiled as we accomplish our big dreams and achieve great things one step and one day at a time. How many of you remember that half the battle is already won by just “showing up”?
Does anybody know why “New Year’s Resolutions” don’t work for most people? Can it be because old habits, like power, concede nothing without a struggle? What bad habit, or false belief, or ideology, or tradition is impeding your earnest efforts to finish an abandoned manuscript and publishing at least one of you forgotten book projects on your list of New Year’s Resolutions? How many aspiring writers, published authors, award-winning authors, or nationally syndicated journalists do we have on our team? Have any of you ever felt uncomfortable sharing your written material before hearing that “click” in your spirit that indicates when your literary work of art is done?
Most people only see the books authors struggle to write after their intellectual property has undergone extensive liposuction and reconstructive plastic surgery to remove the cellulite from the clichés clinging to the pages of our manuscripts. It’s dangerous to fall in love with the words we choose to use but we do it anyway. For most writers, the editing process can be painful. In the legal profession, the writers of legal documents refer to this editing process as “vetting.” It’s amazing how much material winds up on the cutting room floor like deleted scenes from a movie that still manages to win an award.
As most published writers and award-winning authors already know, editing a book can be a messy, time consuming process. Didn’t Murphy’s Law say something to the effect that it always takes longer than predicted to make big dreams come true and it always gets harder than expected to achieve great things? God willing, this, too, shall pass once I quit making a creative mess by juxtaposing eclectic collections of words in the playground of my imagination. Old habits die hard, especially bad ones. My insightful mentors remind me often that
“only a bad wind stubbornly refuses to change directions.”
Otherwise, those of us who view the writing process as yet another creative art form will do what we love to do for years, write just for the fun of it. No wonder publishers and clients created deadlines to keep grown folk like us who love what we do from playing all day. When mastering the art of writing stops being fun, I’ll stop. After almost twenty years, I still love creating artistic photographic images. But my cheese is getting ready to move so I must get ready for the day when I must face another set of fears and embrace Change. By the way, the book, WHO MOVED MY CHEESE, by Spencer Johnson, M.D. is an extremely insightful book that’s well worth the time it takes to read it.
Until the next time we meet, have some fun and enjoy doing what you spent most of your day doing for pay and play at it. Maybe then, you’ll begin to get in touch with the little boy or girl you also buried deep inside that cluttered place where secrets hide. Only God knows what we’ll unearth and birth this year if we keep pushing past the pain and digging deeper until the light we hid can shine bright again.
May the peace of God be with you and yours even if we don’t ever meet again. But if you choose to do so, the rest of our team will accept you and love you just as you are whenever you come. So please don’t be afraid that our culturally diverse group of great people will reject you because you’re “too valuable to ever throw away.” Besides, looks can be deceiving upon first glance.
©Copyright 2007 by Roderick O. Solomon. All Rights Reserved.
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2 comments February 19th, 2007
