In honour of Writer’s Wednesday #WW, I thought I would write a bit about writing – well, about my writing. I have been part of a writing workshop now for about 3 ½ years now – Diving Deeper Writer’s Workshop with Sandra Jensen. I have found it, and continue to find it incredibly helpful to be part of a group of writers. I have resonated strongly with the Diving Deeper/ Freefall methods that Sandra has shared with me over the years. The exchange of ideas, encouragement, support, and feedback over the years have proven to be invaluable to me. In fact- recently, I took the time to archive and do a word count on the amount of writing that I have done during the time that I have been part of the workshop – and the total count was an astounding 311, 123 words. Anyway, the reason that I give the little backgrounder is that today the proposed writing ‘assignment’ is about ‘being a writer’.
Last night I had dinner with a good friend of mine – we were talking about the projects that we are both involved in as well as a couple that we are doing together and she suddenly asked me where I want to go with my writing. I think I must have had a completely blank look on my face, because she asked me twice.
“Uh?” is about what I managed to get out of my mouth.
“Well don’t you want your writing to go somewhere? You know, go further?” she asked again.
“Ummm” I can be a pretty clever companion at dinner… really.
It’s not really the first time I have been asked about this, but each time that I am asked, it feels like it comes out of the blue. I just like to write. I write as much for my own entertainment than anything else. Where will it go? I’ve no clue. I am just enjoying the journey at the moment. I don’t write, for example, to pay the bills or to put food on the table. It isn’t for lofty principles that I choose not to push myself to find someone, somewhere to publish my stories etc. I just like to write. It certainly doesn’t make me a good writer – just a practicing one. If I do get to a place where it is ‘time’ to push, I will, but in the meantime – I am not thinking about where ‘further’ leads to. At least not much… If I keep getting asked that question, I am going to have to thinking about it. Twice now in the past two weeks I have been asked…
I have 311,123 of first draft material…
yeah yeah I’m working on it….
la
lei fraser 