Developing Writing Habits
The phrase “It’s just like riding a bike,” drives me nuts for a couple of reasons. The first reason is purely practical...I don’t know how to ride a bike. The second reason is it takes most people a little while to figure out how to ride a bike.
Riding a bike seems easy. But it takes several attempts to get it just right. It takes pursuit and passion. It takes patience and toughness for some. It takes having that get back up type of attitude that you have to have to get it right.
I feel like writing is the same way. It takes several attempts to get it just right. I have been writing my whole life. I have written content for school at all levels, for sermons, for messages, for social media, for other people’s work.
Writing also takes a relentless type of pursuit that many people just don’t seem to have. It takes a passion for the subject, the book, the thought, the story that is inside the writer to get out.
It takes patience. It takes finding the right time of the day to find the time to think creatively. It takes life happening to you to be able to right well. To write stories that connect to people. To write something that someone else would actually attempt to read and enjoy. To apply to their lives.
It takes passion. To write, you must have it in you. You must have a desire to get something from deep inside of you out for the expressed purpose of helping someone else. I have often thought that everyone has a story to share. But some have books to share. They have wisdom and passion about a particular topic that just needs to ooze onto the pages of a book. Those people are the people you love to have conversations with because they make you better. They help you learn. Their passion rubs off on you. They and their story...their words... are infectious.
It takes toughness because it is tough to write. It is also tough to live well and the living is where the stories come from. Tough people are often healthy people and it is out of the healthy that all writing needs to flow. Getting the ideas of your heart out on to paper or into print out of your head is incredibly tough sometimes. That gritty nature of writing is the journey that makes it all worth it in the end.
I am ready to show that get up and fight type of attitude that I know that I have. in me. I am ready for it to come out on the pages of my first book. I know that will happen because I know that I am all these things. I know that patience, passion, pursuit, toughness, and that get back up kind of attitude are all things that describe who I am.
Maybe I can ride a bike. I think I understand the analogy a bit better now.
