When I was growing up my mother made me do creative writing all through summer vacation as well as writing journals on all our vacations while traveling, and that made writing for me a lot less fun, because it was more of a chore for a kid of 8 through 12, so I ended up fighting having to write anything for most of my early life in and out of school. Once I got out of school, and I moved on in my adult life, I started writing the odd story and article for the family newspaper here or there, but it just wasn’t that fun for me still. In 2000 I started William’s Thoughts and Ideas, to be a site for me to put my day to day happenings on the web like the bofhcam journal, but that didn’t last too long since I got busy at work and totally forgot to write any entries for the day, week, month. After looking at what I was writing when I did do a post I didn’t think my audience would really read it because it was just not exiting being a System Administrator at a civil engineering firm, so the site became more of a hey this is happening in my life or a look into my life as a kid and growing up, or a review of one thing or another and the yearly Christmas List, but there became times where I didn’t write much at all, I have gone for over six months to a year with out anything being written or posted.
Writing posts use to be pretty easy for me at the beginning of all this and looking back at those posts from about 2000 to 2012 I can see why..I never really said much in the way of substance, and my spelling and grammar were soooo bad, but in the past two or so years, it’s been tougher for me to write meaningful posts. It’s not that I don’t have topics I want to write about, I have a huge list, and a few posts started, that I just can’t bring to a close, it’s just been hard for me to get my thoughts down on “paper”. I don’t know if it’s because I am trying to be a better writer or because I get more distracted and less focused when I want to write or just not to have the will to write at all?
Getting distracted and not being focused is one of the issues when writing that happens and I know one thing I need to do is to find a better place and better way to write. When I try to write in the living room with the television on I get caught up with what’s on and don’t write at all. If I am at the Soul Full Cup, I am good till people start coming in to hang out and then I just put the computer away to chat and then seem to lose the will to pick up the writing again when everyone leaves. I am also wondering if part of it is my work schedule now, working midnight to 9 am supposedly can mess up your rhythms and focus escpcially if you aren’t getting a good 6 to 8 hours sleep during the day. Also with my job, working on the computer all the time, it’s tough for me to want to work on one to write on my non-work hours/days.
Writing about my family is one of the easiest kind of writing for me because it’s something I can pull right out of my head and memories and get it down on the page, but is this something other than my family want to read? Same goes for the technical writings, and the reviews are these of any interest to anyone to read but me? It’s tough to know who is reading and what is being liked from my point of view. Are people coming to my site at all or are they staying on Facebook and other social media sites and just clicking the Like button or skipping the writing altogether and scrolling by? These questions also make writing difficult for me, because if no one is reading this stuff what’s the point. I tell myself that I am not doing this to make money or to be famous (because I’m not), I am doing this to have my life documented for future generations of my family to read and know about me and my part of the Bilancio family, but in the now, it’s for those of you who know me understand what’s going on and what I am doing in a fun way as well as imparting some knowledge to them.
Why did I write this and make a post out of it? The take away from this post was to identify what my problems are with my writing and to get my mind back into a place that I hope will get a more even flow of posts posted and better writing.
My second cousin, who was the daughter of Ottillio, son of Pasquale, sent me a book on writing from her home in California. My big take-away from that book, which I only half read, was write without self-judgement.or editorializing. The important thing is to “get it down”, whatever it may be.
I have heard that Jack London, similar to other fiction writers of his day, had a daily objective of one thousand words a day. When writing in long hand we can produce 14 to 20 words/minute. I have read that the word per minute rate when doing creative writing on the computer is around 30 words per minute.
The act of writing itself can be pleasure enough,
I’m so glad to hear your thoughts. It seems that too many of us do not even take the time to begin to think about the writing process. I agree with
Fran: “Write it down.” Thank you for your cogent entry.
William,
I am so proud of you that you are working on your writing. I am sure that as you continue you will enjoy it and that it will become easier. There are not many people who express self-doubt and examine themselves so publicly. This is another good sign of purpose and determination. I’ll be looking forward to reading more of your posts.
Love,
Mom