Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

A Suggestion for a New Year’s Resolution

Now that we are entering 2013, making resolutions are in order. Several years ago, I made a resolution to write every day and kept it. I think this made me a happier writer-person.

When I look at it squarely, anyone can write, provided he or she has finished grade school.

“But the trick is to write well,” some people might argue.

If we sit down to write well, however, this attitude could prove to be discouraging to us because it will awaken the big-mouth critic inside our minds. On the other hand, if we are writing what we want to write while we are being true to ourselves, we already have what is needed to write well. Okay, let’s say, well enough. Being true to ourselves is facing the self that is inside us frankly and challenging it.

Up front, the most important challenge is procrastination. If we make a habit of fighting procrastination by finding at least a few minutes each day for the art of writing--or better yet--for free-flow, eventually we’ll manage to come up with several readable pieces. Just the practice of writing, no matter what or how we are writing, opens up the floodgates.

Maybe, at times, while we write, we’ll feel lost, abandoned by our craft, and stretched beyond our limits. To make writing a habit may even seem unreachable. Through this dark night of the soul of writing, however, we’ll gain self-knowledge and growth and transformation, and we may even experience the euphoria of success every now and then, when unexpected brilliant words or phrases spill out from our pens or from our fingers on the keyboard.

In Paulo Coelho’s blog, one entry starts with a section from his book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept:

“We can only truly understand the miracle of life when we let the unexpected manifest itself…

“Every day we try to pretend that we don’t realize that moment, that it doesn’t exist, that today is just the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if you pay attention, you can discover the magic instant.”

Surely, in Coelho fashion, the author is talking about the blessings found in suffering, in magic instants that resemble epiphanies when we discover our own power even though we are suffering through difficult moments and disappointments, for these moments become marks of strength when we look back.

I think the same wisdom can be applied to writers and the habit of writing, too.

Toward the end of this entry, Coelho continues to say:

“Poor are those who are afraid of taking risks. Because maybe they are never disappointed, never disillusioned, never suffer like those who have a dream to pursue.”

Why not make writing every day one of our resolutions for 2013?

Paulo Coelho’s Blog:
http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2012/05/11/the-magic-moment/