“Dancing with the feet is one thing, but dancing with the heart is another.”
Author unknown
One of the most frequent inquiries that I get is about writing.
It’s a funny thing, writing, you don’t have to be very good at it to do it and I am not very good at it. Some say I am, some say I am not and some are in-between. It’s nice to hear that someone has enjoyed something I have written, and it is painful to hear that my writing isn’t all that good. Either way, I benefit from my ADHD mind in that I don’t focus on criticism too long (not all criticism anyway). It’s not that I don’t care, because trust me, I do care, but one way or the other I just keep on writing. My thoughts and fingers love to dance.
For me, what’s the most bizarre, is when someone asks me about the technical aspects of writing. Let me be very clear and painfully honest with you – I don’t have a clue. I really don’t. It’s not that I haven’t tried to learn grammar, punctuation, syntax and all that jazz, but my mind cannot grasp those things, it really can’t. And I curse those who can (not really, well maybe a little bit, but it is purely out of jealousy and envy). I have tried to learn in the expected ways, but it never sticks. If I look up what a pronoun is, then I can tell you what it is and for a while I will know, but for whatever reason, I will forget.
My writing is raw and real, that’s how I describe it and I wake up pretty happy with a smile on my face knowing my writing is unique and unrefined. Hey, take pride where you can get it, I always say!
I have been absolutely tortured in writing classes all of my life. I have even left classes with tears welling up in my eyes. The thing is, I love writing so much that there is nothing on the face of this earth that could hurt me more than to be told I can never write again. Have you ever had a teacher tell you something so painful that it just made you never want to write again (or something else you love)? That’s happened to me. Well, I never went back to that class again or any other writing class for that matter. I didn’t stop dancing though, did I! It’s hard to stop doing something you love, even when it seems that you should because you’ve been told you’re not good enough and you never will be. Those words became a challenge that I will never let go of!
Here’s the pointers I have for would be writers:
Read as much as you can, as often as you can, and read the things that turn you on. However, just reading isn’t enough, take time to notice the ‘music’ in the writing. Pay attention to the pauses, the crescendos, the rhythm flowing from sentence to sentence and page to page. Most of all allow yourself be drawn in, so deeply that you can feel it. Allow yourself to be moved by the emotional waves of the writer’s words, allow those words to penetrate your soul and the next time you write something, anything, forget about everything else and just allow your words to flow.
For me, the beauty of writing is not the writing itself, it is the passion and exhilaration of saying what I want to say in such a way that you will want to read it again, and again. It’s delightful fun to put down on paper the crazy, the ridiculous and the more serious thoughts I have and then turn them into something others resonate with.
I enjoy dancing, swirling and jumping on the dance floor, taking you in my arms and twirling you around. I take great joy in making you smile with me as we share an intimate moment in a warm embrace on the sparkling floor of our dreams and passions. This is our stage and the words are our music. If you get what I am trying to say, that’s all that matters to me. If I have moved you, or made you consider something new or different, then that’s the greatest success I will ever have, the greatest success I ever want to have.
Let the music play!
Don’t let anything hold you back from your passions. Do what you do because you enjoy it and allow it room to breathe without borders and barriers. Learn all that you can, but find ways of learning that work for you! Don’t give up, no, don’t ever do that.
Allow me to impart a few words of advice I learned from the movie The Color of Money – “Pool excellence is NOT about excellent pool” ~Fast Eddie Felson –Within that line is one of the most important lessons I ever learned, it’s the key to the universe.
Of course, my writing is not going to put me on the Oprah show any time soon; however, if that’s what you write for then it will make your journey in writing very difficult and possibly quite disappointing. First and foremost, write for one person and only you know who that person is. It’s so easy to allow ourselves to be held back from what we love. It doesn’t have to bring you wealth or approval, it just has to be what you want it to be for you and nobody can take that away from you.
~Bryan
