I’ve read in a lot of books about writing that in order to get anywhere with writing it is necessary to write at least a page a day. I was at one time trying to break into the fiction market. I was writing at least five pages a day about whatever popped in my head and I would not stop until I reached five pages. This type of writing is called free writing.
I stopped writing for a couple of years. Life happened and I had to buckle down. Being practical superseded trying to live my dream. I am trying to break back into the market again. However, this time I am going down a different road. That is the article road.
I find this to be a lot more challenging than fiction writing. See, in fiction writing, I could write whatever I wanted. There is little requirement for facts in fiction writing.
Article writing requires a lot of facts. Facts are not hard to come by. Finding facts that are indeed facts and not an interpretation of the facts is the difficult part.
So I get out my notebook and I write a list of all of the things I would like to write about. Then I write facts in big bold letters next to each idea.
Sports, Motorcycles, Women, Abuse, Alcoholism, Running, Eating right. These are some of the ideas I have jotted down. Some of these ideas are articles in progress which may make it to my blog or may be a victim of the delete button.
I was fortunate enough to get a response when I posted a link to my blog here on my Facebook page. A writer guy I am friends with on there gave me some good advice. I have to love it and I have to keep writing.
Ideas come from living. I have to reach deeper and pull out some of the stuff that may make me a little uncomfortable to write about. This world certainly wasn’t built on playing it safe. My writing won’t be built on playing it safe either, it seems.