Thursday, September 20, 2012

Musings



Where are the words today?

I felt the urge to write something so I opened up this blank page and sat there, fingers poised above the keys, just waiting.
There are ideas in my head – but they are like those funny floaty things that lurk at the very edges of your peripheral vision. When you try to turn to see them properly, they simply flit away.
I read other people’s Blogs to see if something in their writings would inspire me. But they didn’t.

I’ve read articles by some of the writing greats who tell me that this is a common experience. The words don’t always flow as you would like them to. There’s no magical incantation to make it happen – no day of the week or hour of the day when it’s guaranteed that I will fill up the blank page.

And it doesn’t really matter whether it happens or not today. No one is going to be ringing me to find out when I’m likely to post again. No one will be pounding on my door, demanding that I honour some commitment to turn out X number of pages per week, or per month, or per year.

Oh I used to dream of being an author, of seeing my name emblazoned across the cover of a multitude of books on the book store shelves. But very few aspiring writers get to be on the bestselling list. I guess we all soon discover that writing for a living requires a whole lot more than the desire to write and a smidgen of talent.
Still, thanks to the Internet, we can all still write to our hearts content and even find a regular readership. I don’t have to churn out thirty thousand words and write proposal letters. I don’t have to suffer endless rejections in the hope of finally finding someone to publish my work. I don’t have to meet deadlines; to study market trends, so I know what it is that people want to read these days. I don’t have to spend a small fortune promoting my work in the hope that someone, other than my closest friends and family members, will buy my book.

 I can write whatever, and whenever, I want.

Or I could if the words would come.

Where are the words today?

©Lyn Murphy 2012

2 comments:

travellerlina said...

hey, Lyn, keep writing and the rest will be on the way!

Ray Colon said...

Hi Lyn,

Those elusive words can confound us, can't they? More confounding is why we keep doing it. The low number of visitors, the seemingly impossible odds of success, and those many instances of paralysis you describe would make a sensible person turn to something else to do.

It's a good thing that we don't embrace those negative vibes. We write for ourselves and we have things to share -- even if we share those things with just a few.

Where are my words today? I haven't determined if I have any yet. As always, I'll give it a try and see if I can find them.