I wrote this six years ago. It's still true today. Here it is again.
“Man, I wish someone would write a story about…”
No, stop. Stop. Stop typing that post, and start typing that story instead. Just type that. Then share that. Share the story instead.
“But I’m not a writer!” you might say. Well, maybe that’s true now, because you’re not presently writing. So start writing, then. Look! Now you’re a writer! It’s really that simple.
“But I can’t write!” You were about to type up a Facebook post, presumably using some kind of computer or phone. Don’t want to use those? Grab a pen and some paper. As well as this, you’ve already proven that you have an imagination - you have an idea for a story. You have everything you need to start writing. You can do it.
“But it won’t be any good if I write it!” Y’know, maybe that’s true. But writing, like any skill, is something that gets better with practice.Maybe it’ll take you a while to get that story out of your head. Maybe it’ll take days. Or weeks. Or months. Or years. But you can get it out of your head and onto the page.
“But what if I finish writing the story and it’s terrible?” Want to know a secret? Everybody’s first drafts are awful. They are. It’s incredibly rare for a someone to bash out a story on their first spin of the wheel and think, “Yeah, this is good, I’m done.” A first draft is like a sketch, and the sketch isn’t the painting.
“But what if people don’t like it?” Then that’s their problem. Shakespeare had haters, too. Didn’t stop him from bashing out a million-billion plays.
“But what if nobody cares?” I promise you, somebody will care. Every story, every piece of fiction ever penned, has at least one person out there who thinks of it as their all-time favorite thing. We live in a world where someone’s favorite movie is Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Someone, somewhere, will love the story you’re about to write. Somebody will hold it close to their chest. They’ll read it and re-read it, they’ll write metas about it, they’ll write fanfiction. And they’ll say to their friends, “Hey, have you read this? You should check it out - it’s my favorite.”
“But I don’t want to write it… I just want to be able to read it.” And, y’know, that’s okay. Sometimes those “I wish someone would write a story about…” posts inspire others. But often they don’t, and that means that story idea swimming around in your head stays just that - an idea. Sometimes the only person who can put something into the world is you. Why wait?
Wishing is nothing. Hoping is something. Action is everything. Act. Write. Create. And let me know when it’s done - I’d love to read it.
