Motivation Elevates Your Writing
Understanding the reason you want to write will save you a lot of time and frustration. I spent years sitting before a blank page, searching the keyboard and my soul for the right words. But I did not spend enough time searching for my reasons to write.
Love is not enough.
We have heard this expression spoken many times about relationships. As we get older, we begin to see this alone cannot sustain a love affair. Soon life will get in the way, distracting you from that initial attraction and causing amnesia of the thrill.
My love affair with writing has been as complicated as with any man I ever devoted myself to. Just as the faces of the men in my life changed, so did my writings. I drifted from spoken-word influenced poetry to journalism (newspaper, magazine, television) to travel writing to essays to e-books to blogging and back to essays and memoirs.
With each form, I was searching for not only myself, but my purpose. And while I was looking for the words to paint the imprints of my heart, I never once asked what my heart could offer. Like love, writing can be a selfish endeavor.
If for no other reason, writing can make you feel good. The release of pinned up emotion and nagging tension offers a calming effect that is not only refreshing but uplifting, allowing you to refocus your attention to what is most important in life–the now.
The next level of writing offers a method for rationalizing and reflecting. This deeper exploratory writing beckons the meaning of your life and the world around you. Writing becomes a way of excavating the truth beyond our shallow surroundings.
The next notch up is writing purely for self-expression, typically infusing release and reflection. This does not inherently require an audience but a desire to articulate and sift through the inner workings of your mind.
An offshoot of self-expression is the next writing domain: chronicling or recording what in this world is most sacred to you. Typically, the writer intertwines personal insight with the magnificence of nature, family trees, or cultural landscapes.
The next writing domain requires an interested audience to impart knowledge or pleasure. Most contemporary writings reside here, housing the vast majority of books, magazines, and blogs. This realm is adorned with flashing lights luring literary hopefuls to see their name in print and on checks.
The ultimate story of writing is to improve mankind, creating literary arts which permeates times and space. This literature is reveled and looked upon with the same discerning eye as an observer of Dali.
So what is your reason for writing?
I write because my soul aches at the faint notion of not writing. I write because if I don’t, my life will not be fulfilled nor fulfill. I write to make the world more beautiful.
No day elapses without a thought of writing, regardless if it’s achieved.
I now know the terrain of true passion, the unchartered land beyond intense want. I now know what love is, I know what life is, I know what writing is.
