The past month or so has been interesting for my writing career. I’ve stopped just writing for myself because the occasional person has offered to exchange my writing for the green stuff. Which is weird. But awesome. Weird because ever since I was a kid I wanted to be a writer. I kept a little writer’s notebook (courtesy of the greatest inspirational book for any young writer), pretended to be Harriet the Spy and kind of wished I could be my dad. Weird because now I’m doing it. Years and a hundred mind changes later and I can officially call myself a writer. Which is where the awesome part comes in.
Except lately I’m been staring at a blank screen trying to find the perfect word. I agonize over every sentence and read things over and over again until the words start sounding weird. (You totally know when that happens. When you say a word a million times and it doesn’t even sound like a word anymore?) And I think to myself: why is this happening? I’ve never had writers block. Writing has always been easier for me than talking. Than anything, really. After about an hour of this yesterday I just decided to write like I thought. Cuss words, “like” and “totally” peppered throughout. A little aggressive. And the strangest thing happened – everything started flowing again.
Some of my now paid writing is a little more professional then the occasional “shit” and “totally” so I went back and removed them from my press release/article/thesis/etc. Doing that didn’t change my voice though, and I keep forgetting why these people hired me. My parents and various other older professionals tell me to watch what I put on the blog. That bringing up my day job or any other such inappropriate nonsense could jeopardize future work. Which is totally possible. But I feel like now I can afford to only take jobs from people who actually get who I am and how I write. I understand the need to tailor your writing to each client but I’ve also learned it’s much easier to put yourself into the words first and edit later.
