A Dose of Inspiration: Three Perspectives on Writing

For many, writing is a solitary act. One of the benefits of blogging and being part of a larger community is stumbling upon posts and discovering new voices — and realizing you’re not the only one who feels uncertainty or self-doubt when it comes to the craft. Using the Search page in the Reader, we dived into the stream of posts on writing. Here are three reads to enjoy.

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On (no longer) writing in a diary

Amrita, the writer at Of Opinions, reflects on her decision to stop writing in a diary — an act that was truly for herself.

I don’t know why, maybe it’s age or depression, but I don’t feel the need for it anymore. I still have feelings, strong feelings and reflections from time to time, but there’s always Netflix to sort that pain. I’ve had the same diary since 2016, and I’ve barely reached September on it. It’s been lying under my pillow for two years, next to my small daily expenditure diary, which sees more inkage than it.

I am more interested in how much I spent on milk than how I felt about a life-changing situation.

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For the writer who hasn’t been writing

At Live to Write — Write to Live, Jamie Lee Wallace muses on the parts of ourselves, like hopes and dreams, that can benefit from time in stasis.

Dormancy is a regular part of nature. At this time of year, we think of the world as “coming back to life,” but the innumerable seedlings and buds that finally emerge in spring have, in fact, been very much alive during the long, enchanted sleep of winter. They were never dead; they were just biding their time until the moment was right. . . .

Like a seed that must hold itself in limbo until there is enough space, sunshine, water, and nutrients to sustain it, sometimes our dreams have to wait until we have the right life experience, confidence, or motivation.

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All writers start at the same place

At Novelty Revisions, Meg Dowell tells us not to worry — we all suck at writing at some point; terrible writing is a rite of passage.

Every once in a while, I pull up things I wrote 10, 15 years ago. I read them, or at least start to. I cringe so hard my face hurts. And then I go back to what I was writing before, feeling a lot less doubtful about my ability to do good work. . . .

So when you find yourself thinking, “I’ll never write anything as good as that,” remember that writer once thought that about the very thing you just read. And chances are, the first draft of what they wrote was a whole lot worse than what you see on that page.

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