My Favorite Part About Writing

My favorite thing about writing is looking over what I just wrote and realizing how much progress I’ve made. Like hey, an hour ago this wasn’t here and I’ve created something cool.

I know that might come off as lame but that’s honestly my favorite part. Seeing how much I wrote gives me encouragement to keep writing. If I’ve written that much, why can’t I write more?

I think knowing why you do the things you love to do is what gives you the will to keep doing it. Remembering what you love about writing will pull you through the toughest writing times whether it’s having writer’s block or not feel like writing at all.

I love talking about writing, and I love knowing why people either love writing or don’t care for it as much as I do.

Why do you write and what do you get out of it?

This question is something every writer should answer, but because it causes you to really think about why you want to be a writer in the first place.

What do you get from writing thousands of words a day, if you do? The money or the recognition from strangers, friends, and family? Or do you do it just because you can’t not do it?

None of these reasons are wrong, but it’s important to understand your answer so you won’t have a writing career striving for something like money and being disappointed when you don’t become a millionaire from selling your first book.

Do you know other writers?

I used to have a writer friend who could writer faster than anyone I knew. In two days, he wrote a book when it was taking me all summer to finish one novel. But he didn’t know why he wanted to write. To me, that seemed to be a big problem and it was a problem for him too.

He kept asking me questions like: Why do you write, Shaquanda? What would you do instead if you weren’t writing? What would you do if something happened to your hands and you couldn’t write?

Those questions bothered me. Not because he asked them but because I knew he wanted to know my answer to compare it to himself. He wanted to know why he should love writing. He was afraid to love writing because he was afraid that his writing wasn’t good enough. He told me this fear of not being a good writer with me on another occasion.

Anyway, my friend stopped writing and he never spoke to me again. He just said he didn’t want to do it anymore because he didn’t want to depend on it for his happiness. Yes, writing made him happy but I he didn’t want that dependency. It’s hard to explain.  It was a weird goodbye conversation, but I did learn one thing.

If you love writing and you have a passion for it, you just can’t turn it off. The passion stays with you no matter how hard you try to resist it. You can’t build a burning passion because it’s uniquely inside of you already. You just have to discover it.

Even though my friend decided to throw in the towel when it comes to writing (which is a shame because I’ve read some of his work and he really had potential to become a great writer) when he felt like he wasn’t any good that doest mean you should.

No matter what your goal is or the reason you write, you should never give up by thinking you’re not good enough. Because you are. You are good enough even if I’m the only one that’s telling you this.

No one started off writing on the level that they are at now. We grow and learn the more we write. My friend had only started writing two years before I met him, and I have been writing since I was nine. That’s a lot of years difference and he wasn’t far behind me in skill. It’s just when I showed him my writing he turned in the towel.

Don’t be like him.

We all have our own paths to follow and we do it by believing in ourselves and trusting that we have the ability  to keep growing and learning. I’m no way as good as I know I’m going to be because every time I write I get better.

And so will you.

-Shaquanda

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *