5 Things That Didn’t Help Me Write
We’re all looking to find the secret of writing success. What’s THE THING? It’s there, it’s hanging over me, it’s presence is tangible. I can almost see it but if I try to look directly at it, it’s gone. Like a Magic Eye poster, some people seem to get it immediately & others keep trying to adjust their focus forever, never seeing anything.
I’ve been searching for THE THING that would help me write, and the 5 things below were not it.
A Fountain Pen
Fountain pens are beautiful. They seem to write with intention, they only create important words. As the ink flows from the nib, so shall the creativity.
Rather than make a big investment on this whim, I ordered a disposable one.
After several long, painful days of waiting for it to arrive & relieve me of the creative blockage I was struggling through, I wrote.
I wrote the words “fountain pen” four times in a row, then put the pen away.
I brought it to work the next day. Creativity usually sneaks up when I’m trying to concentrate on stupid spreadsheets. The pen jotted down my to-do list, it crossed off a couple tasks, it’s ink soaked through the paper, there was no inspiration in it.
A Fancy Notebook
I’ve always avoided hard cover notebooks. I love them, but my words feel too stupid to write down in something so nice. My hurried printing is too messy for such an object of beauty. The books themselves made me feel inadequate.
Maybe that was what I needed though? To have something that would make me try harder, to slow down & print neatly, write all the ideas down, as if the beauty of a fancy notebook would create beauty in my words.
It didn’t. All I learned from using a beautiful, fancy notebook is that you really can’t judge a book by it’s cover.
A Tiny Notebook
I bet the problem with the fancy notebook was that it was too big. Carrying it around with me felt like a burden! I can’t write when I feel the weight of the fancy notebook dragging me down!
A tiny fancy notebook would absolutely solve this. Ready to record everything, as the ideas ebb & flow. It accomplished this task beautifully, every thought from “Ideas ebb & flow” to “Write about taxes?” are documented.
Most of them are crap. My writing remained consistent.
A New Laptop
After days of research into which machine will fit my budget & also has the most inspiration pre-loaded, I clicked “Confirm Order” and began to wait.
The waiting was torture, I made the purchase at a point when the weekend would interfere massively with the delivery time. Why hadn’t I just bought it locally? I need my instant gratification! I struggled through the weekend, glaring at my old computer.
“You never inspired me, you just took in my words and sat there. Your days are numbered.”
The magic machine finally arrived. I un-boxed it reverently, started it up, logged into my account and…. Sat staring at it, remembering that it’s just a computer, the same as my last one, only this one was slightly larger.
It did not help me to write.
A Bottle of Wine
This did help, but only for the first 2 glasses. The rest of the bottle, I should have left in the fridge…..
I thought “Write drunk, edit sober, like all the tragic hero writers!”
It turned into “Write a bit, take a little break, suddenly it’s bed time & you’re having a bubble bath”
Although I did like what I wrote, it just wasn’t super useful for anything.
Write drunk, write mostly swear words & inside jokes….
Write sober, write things that play it safe so that you don’t offend anyone.
The wine didn’t change my life, it wasn’t the thing.
I’m new in my quest to find THE THING, and so many people will spend their lives searching for it. Even those people who look like they’ve got it, they’re still searching too. I might search forever, and maybe it wasn’t this specific fountain pen or fancy notebook that does it, but I gotta keep trying.
If I’m lucky, I’ll figure it out. But in the mean time, I’ve got a hunch about this jewel encrusted mechanical pencil I saw the other day…..
