Thursday, October 4, 2007

Write 1000-2000 words a day


Here's a goal: If you want to be a writer, you should write 1000-2000 words every day! Of course, all of the advice says, if you want to write, you have to write regularly. Fair enough. Very sound advice indeed. Although, I can't seem to follow it.

Does this mean 2000 words of blather? Or does it have to be focused, purposeful writing. Will "automatic" dadaist writing do? The advice doesn't say. So many days go by of me persecuting myself for not coming up with something brilliant, predigested, and perfectly worded, that I do not write a word, but writhe in a lack of profluence.

Some of my best writing is under 500 words, which almost always comes out in a minute of inspiration. Problem is, inspiration running low.... Of course, this was an advice website for aspiring freelance journalists, a career I gave up over 15 years ago. The guy said that he reads hundreds of magazines. I just don't have the stamina for that anynmore. I may have back in my early twenties, but I changed, and now that's all over.

Even though I am not hyper-productive, and I question my motivation a lot, underneath it all, I like to think I am a writer.

Some other advice I've read is to tell people that you're a writer, if you want to be one. I did this for years in between dropping a journalism career, and dreaming of writing stories. Okay, I'd written some stuff in Alice Sebold's creative writing classes at Hunter College in New York, so I can't say that I was a total fraud. I'd written lots of other things. But I did feel like a fake a lot of the time when I told people (mostly in the art community of New York) that I was a fiction writer. Some astute people would want to know what kind of fiction I wrote. I had a remedy for this, too. I told them the truth, which is that I play around with voice, using material from my own life, developing different persona's.

Once, years ago, in the process of giving up a journalism career, I met with a guy who was a feature writer for Forbes or Fortune. He told me that when he was starting out he had what he like to call the "impostor complex." He was working at Time, but had a constant internal dialogue that he was an impostor, and that sooner or later, someone was going to find him out, and that he would get the sack. Of course, his fears were never played out, and he went on to have a career in journalism.

What a shame that I've never had the guts to go for anything. Even with people around me telling me that I was capable, I was always intent on proving to them that they were all wrong, and that I was right. I really was the impostor. It's a great way to squander all of your talent, grinding it down into sodden ashes.

There can always be a new dawn. I might just achieve my personal millennium goal to become a writer, yet. Hooray!

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