Good day to you! Join 500+ writers, creatives, misfits, and weirdos and learn to write like you mean it in 10 minutes a day. Get ONE practical tip, story, or shenanigan Monday to Friday 🖖🏼
“Respect my authoritahhhhhh”
|
Hey Reader, “Respect my authoritaaaaaaaaah!!!” /Southparkmode Was chatting to a friend last night about how the word “authority” contains the word “author” and all the implications of that. Like, the bro marketers will tell us that “a book cements our authority on the subject” and yeah, okay. For sure it can do that. Even if you’re not an authority on the subject (but that’s for another day). It’s part of the reason I’ve written at least one of my books (How the hell do you write a book). But it’s not the only reason and it doesn’t have to be part of the reason at all. Guess what: You can, if you want, write a book just for fun. Because you want to. I KNOW RADICAL CONCEPT RIGHT??! But everything must be productive! We must produce! WE MUST FEED THE ENDLESS MACHINE OR WE ARE WORTHLESS! And don’t hear what I’m not saying: we need money to pay bills and buy food and have nice things and I’m all in favour of that. A book can support those goals. But it doesn’t have to. I wrote Don’t Eat the Frog mostly for fun. Partly because I get enraged by all the one-size-fits-all writing and productivity advice bandied around by neurotypical white dudes with immense privilege who don’t understand there are many ways to move through the world and create things. And partly just because I wanted to do a few doodles and share a few ideas. And guess what? It took the pressure off. I think when we’re constantly writing stuff with the goal and idea that THIS MUST BE USEFUL AND PRODUCTIVE two things happen:
Rather than thinking about this one piece of work and what it has to do, try this instead: Create a writing practice. Create a body of work, some of which will be brilliant, some will be terrible, most will (hopefully) be good enough. Use it to build relationships with people, whatever the end goal of those relationships may be. Use it to make connections. Use it to use your voice.
And above all: enjoy it. Write for fun, for joy, for interest. Instead of: this is my work and I am an authoritahhhhh… Try: hey, I found this thing / thought this thing / made this thing — isn’t it interesting? What do you think? Approach with curiosity, not authority, and start a conversation that way. What do you think? Is that something you could try, for maybe a month, see how it goes? If so, you might want to nab one of the 5 spaces on my Write Every Damn Day on Easy Mode service, which you can do right here. TTFN, Vicky p.s. If you like this newsletter and want to support it, you can:
|
Learn to Write Like You Mean It
A daily newsletter by Vicky Quinn Fraser
Good day to you! Join 500+ writers, creatives, misfits, and weirdos and learn to write like you mean it in 10 minutes a day. Get ONE practical tip, story, or shenanigan Monday to Friday 🖖🏼
Hey Reader, I’m thinking of starting a club called The Bad Art Club. What do you reckon? Would you join? Mostly a rhetorical question, so you don’t have to answer unless you really want to. In the Creative Playground this morning we were talking about weekend plans and one of mine is to paint something. I dragged my watercolours out last weekend and stared at them for a while. Then, yesterday, I painted a birthday card for a friend. It’s not terribly good, but it is silly, and I enjoyed...
Hey [FIRST NAME GOES HERE], Most people don’t want to write. They want to have written something. And I get that. I want to be able to do the splits… But I don’t want to actually stretch and train it… because training is hard work and it’s frustrating seeing my legs at a right angle when my friend over there is fanny-to-the-floor Splitty McSplit Face and rightfully smug about it. The question then becomes: how much do I want to be able to do the splits? What am I willing to endure to get...
Hey [FIRST NAME GOES HERE], You don’t need “the muse”. You need a consistent writing practice. One may appear just at the right moment for you, like the capricious and unreliable floozy it is, but the other means you’ll create your own inspiration, every single day, no matter what that unreliable floozy may be up to. So: let’s create that consistent writing practice, shall we? Write Every Damn Day on Easy Mode is available all throughout May, and by the time we’re done — after 30 days —...