Pinning down the voice in your head

Writing is something that can’t be forced. It’s a fickle thing: trying to catch the voice in your head, pinning it down, and making it coherent. Each one of these steps is fraught with pitfalls — sometimes, that voice is running for its life, begging to not be perceived. It’ll struggle and fight you, refusing to comply. Why so resistant? I don’t know.

Maybe it’s the fear of failure. Believing, deep down, that the voice has nothing worthwhile to say. Pinning it on paper to show other people, just for it to be mediocre, is mortifying. Look at what my brain made!

Maybe it’s the indecision of knowing what to say. You can say anything. You have all the tools you need to write words that can move mountains. And you’re using it to…elaborately complain about how hard it is to write.

Shifting the perspective from fear to optimism almost feels naive, even though it’s necessary for any level of success. Shoot for the moon, and you’ll at least land among the stars.

Yet another platitude I hate. You can shoot for the moon and never make it off the ground. You can shoot for the moon and end up like one of a million writers blathering to themselves on the internet, designated to the desperate existence begging for attention. The likelihood that you land amongst the stars is still incredibly slim. Almost as unlikely as landing on the moon itself.

Sometimes, it seems like wanting to write is not enough. You have to have something to say. An agenda, a mission, an…