JUST WRITE AND IT WILL BE EASY

In reading Donald M. Murray's recent book, Writing to Deadline, I was struck with him saying that writing is easy.  And was particularly  interested in his quoting William Stafford who said

"I believe that the so-called 'writing block' is a product of some kind of disproportion between your standards and your

performance….  One should lower his standards until there is no felt threshold to go over in writing.  It is easy to write.

You just shouldn't have standards that inhibit you from writing." (p. 126)

In an earlier book, A Writer Teaches Writing, Murray had said that writing was hard, yet in that same earlier book he said that that was his opinion at that time.   He said he didn't know what he would think in the future.  So, clearly, despite the fact that Murray gives guidelines about how to write, flexibility is really important to him.   There is no writer that I've come across who has given a strict, unchangeable guideline or set of guidelines for how to write.

That being said, there are some writers who earnestly believe that it is essential to write every day.   (We could consider Julia Cameron's "morning pages" to be daily writing.)  There are some who believe that even if you have nothing to say, you need to sit down and sit for the entire writing time you've decided upon.  Even if this means staring at the blank page the whole time.

My own view, as I've indicated in Overcome Writer's Block Easily, is to be sure that you keep writing something every day.  Basically, writing keeps you in "the writing game."  There no competition here.  Rather, it's a way to stay in "writing shape."

It doesn't matter if you think of a phrase or a sentence, or if you find a phrase or sentence and write it over and over.  At some point, a writing spark can appear, and you'll be off and running.  It will be easy because you'll be keeping that inner critical voice away just because of how you got into writing.

If you haven't tried it, why not give it a whirl… or at least a slow walk.