Writers: Don't Forget This

Photo credit: Taylor Liberato on Flickr

I am handwriting this blog post. Or rather, I was, before I typed it up and posted it online for all of you to read.

Point is, I’ve been thinking about the process of writing—not the techniques and structure and style of the words, but the act of writing itself, the literal scraping of graphite on paper that forms into shapes that our trained brains then interpret as words or the tapping of labeled keys that send electronic or wireless signals into a machine that replicates the letters we ask it to reproduce.

I’m talking about the signals that our brains send to our hands, our fingers, the thousands of internal, automatic processes that in turn lead to words cemented into paper, into computer code, into the outside world.

I’ve come to realize that writing—hell, any type of creation—is amazing and beautiful and special, and sometimes we forget just how incredible this writing thing (or painting/drawing/sculpting/composing thing) really is.

We have this ability—this incredible ability—to create something out of nothing, to transform blank pages into beautiful prose, to tell a story that no one else knows. That no one else would ever know if we didn’t tell it.

We writers are special, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve been writing for two weeks or two decades, if all you’ve ever written are short stories and poems or if you’ve published twenty novels. Every one of us has something to share, something that only we can create, something that sets us apart from everyone else.

Don’t forget that.

When you spend months or years pouring your soul into a manuscript that only receives form rejection letters, don’t forget that you’ve already done something incredible.

When you write post after post and you feel like no one is listening, don’t forget that your words are special because they’re yours.

When you’ve rewritten your fourth manuscript nine times and you still can’t get an agent/publisher to notice you, don’t forget that you’ve already created something out of nothing—that you will create more.

Writers/painters/sculptors/musicians—artists—are special. You are special.

Never forget it. 

What else do you think it’s important for writers (or artists in general) to never forget?