To write, you need so very little.
You need an honest heart. And some paper.
- Heather Sellers, Page After Page
Writing, as too few of us seem to remember (I include myself in this), is first of all a practice. Something we need to do every day, like brushing our teeth. Without practice, writing tends to be awkward, lifeless and dull. And full of holes.
Writing daily is more than a limbering up of the writing brain, it is also an extended apprenticeship with words. Just as we can not be masters of any other skill worth cultivating on the first two tries, we can’t expect ourselves to write amazing, clear or heartfelt prose on the first couple of attempts.
We need to learn how we string words together, what works in terms of sentence structure for what we are trying to say. The only sure way to get to that is to practice.
Practice in most anything tends to become a chore after a bit. That’s just the nature of practice. The important thing is to keep going and the chore becomes transformed into something you look forward to most days.
Learning to say what you really mean, the truth of your life, will require you to practice writing. The practice I suggest follows Julia Cameron’s morning pages concept. Every day, three nice long notebook pages (no cheating and using a 3×5 index card size notebook!) on anything at all, your day, the weather, frustration, grocery lists or to do lists, anything at all just as long as you fill three pages every day.
Something interesting happens when you do this. It gets easier. You discover you have a lot to say about many things, not just the memoir ideas you are entertaining these days. You begin to work out some of your memoir ideas, more ideas come along. Your writing becomes richer, your stories more alive.
For me, the daily practice of writing means I am keeping my promises to myself, and that makes many more creative projects possible.