Writing As Its Own Inspiration

Writers write for different reasons. If you're good enough and lucky enough, you make money. The powerhouse gatekeepers in publishing will say, luck has nothing to do with success. Hard work and talent determine a writer's career. I tend to agree with them. And ignore the hell out of anything they say, including how to succeed as a writer, detriment be damned.

I'm tired of advice. Right? I hear you shaking your head. Everyone's got advice for writers. There's money to be made on giving advice to writers -- about how to write, what to write, fixes to write, salves to write, addenda addenda addenda. Maybe I'll patent The Writing Patch. Slap it on your derrière and you'll be bound for literary fame and fortune in no time. I'd make a bucketful of money. Now, not all writing advice is snake oil patches, but there are too many people giving advice, (hey, look, I'm one of them) and it all bleeds together and not in a beautiful Monet delicate-brush way.

I don't really count myself as one of the advice-givers. I'd count myself as a wandering seeker. My path is forged from trying out a new passion. Novel writing is a special brand of high. I'm not a stoner (although on one of my stray index cards around the house, this title hit me recently: One Nation Under Pot. Air lick it as one book to write), but creating a story is its own kind of inspiration.

Wait, you say. Advice about writing and inspiration are two different things. Yes, and no. If you're learning the craft, you still must take advice in good humor. Advice can have the tendency to induce writer's block. There's plenty of time (most likely a lifetime) for you to revise your work and improve. But if you let stinging or overwhelming or too-close-for-comfort advice keep you from writing, you'll never write enough to produce something good.

I don't have to go looking for advice. Of course, I study techniques and try them out. But the act of writing gives me all the fluffy cloud inspiration I need to blissfully (maybe just contentedly) keep going. Go to the page. Pour some words on it. Stamp your feet in the puddles. I'll meet you outside without an umbrella.