WILCOX WRITING

A major obstacle to writing is the idea that all content must be professional, publishable content or serve a definite purpose.

This is the biggest falsity about writing.

Excellent content begins with putting pen to paper, or as a more modern analogy, “fingers to keyboard.”

Excellent content is written content that has been revised and polished. But that content needs to be written first. One needs to write.

Not everything that is written will always make the cut. I have roughly 150 writings (or to be more precise, some of them are scribbles) in my virtual notebook. A whopping 98% of those are unpublished. And 98% of those will probably never be published on my personal blog. A lot of those notes are simply one paragraph, a collection of sentences with half-baked ideas, or an outline or set of bullet points of writings that might have been fruitful to publish to my blog or develop into a larger writing.

As a perfectionist, I suffer from “but this isn’t good enough to show the world” syndrome. And hence, I fail to publish writings, and put off working on them because of the diminishing returns of putting in time to perfect them.

Whenever I get a spark of imagination or an idea brews, I write it into my virtual notebook (I use Microsoft OneNote). I write it down as it sits in my mind. If I don’t write it down when it’s there, it may become lost forever. How fickle are ideas.

With my training in philosophy, I’m an idea person. Sometimes a writing scribble comes out sounding crazy after I re-read it. Sometimes it leads to something imaginative that I do publish.

When I get time to actually write, I then have a collection of ideas to work from, some of them with a very frail structure, some of them with a better structure (depending on how much time I spent first writing it down or how strong the idea was). I can then revise, rework, and build from that foundation.

I also have several “book” ideas that I’ve started and never finished. (scope is another obstacle to writing, which I’m not discussing here).

Writing need not only be with the intent that it becomes a perfect, published piece. Sometimes it starts with a seed, a kernel of an idea. Without planting that seed, there is no potential for a finished piece.

Seeds can grow, and those trees can be pruned. So it is with writing. Plant that idea, then prune (edit/revise) it if it flourishes. Not all seeds sprout trees. We will never know unless we sow them.

If you need help with planting those seeds in the first place, or pruning them after they sprout, that’s what we’re here for.

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Wilcox Writing offers copywriting, editing, and personalized writing tutoring services. Don’t be shy to contact us on our website for any of our services. We’re here to help you bring your best word forward!