My crazy idea

Everyone else is doing it. Well, not everyone – just the successful and well paid writers. I spend hours hanging on the words they tell other writers and reporters; they write everyday. Now, if writing everyday was something that only a few of these writers did, I could brush off my habit of writing something creative twice a month, tops, as something that works for me. But it wasn't a few writers who said this. In both written and taped interviews I have read or seen, every successful writer has said that they write everyday.

I don't write everyday. I spend my days chasing news stories and my nights planning how my freelance career is going to take off. When I do have time to put my creativity down on paper, I do one of several things instead: sleep, catch up with old friends, read books, watch movies, clean, or move my laptop under my bed while telling myself I can write later. Sometimes I do manage to get the laptop on. If this happens, I search the internet for information on whatever I am thinking about, check e-mails, clean out my e-mail inbox, and search for nonfiction writing jobs. If I actually open up Word, I stare at the one sentence I wrote and watch the cursor blink. If I write more than one sentence, eventually I stop, tell myself that the story I am trying to tell is undeveloped and lacks whatever good novelists and short story writers have, and then hit Select All and Delete.

Today I had a crazy idea: I am going to make myself write something down in my blog everyday for at least a month. When I created my blog, I had no intention of doing this. I had planned on writing when the mood struck me or inspiration hit me. But truth be told, I do not want to be the writer I am now. I want to be better. Challenging myself this way should bring forth some good creative work I can submit. Then I can be the successful and well paid writer giving interviews instead of interviewing writers.

Of course, I have never been interested writing to gain success or money. It would be ideal, and I would certainly take both if they came my way, but I write for a different cause. I write to change people and the world we live in.

Cheesy and cliched, I know. But it is the truth. For now, just call me green.