Finding Motivation, and Staying Motivated

Two of the essays in part IX of Telling True Stories stood out to me.  Stewart O’Nan’s Not Stopping: Time Management for Writers, and Susan Orlean’s A Passion for Writing.

O’Nan begins his essay with a quote from Joseph Conrad.

There are only two difficult things about writing:  starting and not stopping.

While there are certainly other difficult parts of the writing process, I do agree that forcing myself to write is really one of the more painful parts of the process.

I first started writing when I was about 15.  I guess what I was doing was keeping a journal, but I didn’t really call it that.  I would write every so often, maybe every two weeks, sometimes more time would lapse, and I would write about things going on in my life.  My entries would usually start off with a description of some event, a soccer game, a party, etc.  but somewhere in writing about some event I would usually come across some new fresh almost philosophical idea.

Not that these entries would mean anything to anyone else, but my favorite part about writing was going back and reading previous entries before creating a new one.

I never would make myself write, I would only sit down and write if I had an idea that I needed to put on paper.  But I always enjoyed my own writing, and would find these new ideas other from what I sat down to write.

So I guess there are countless ideas I could have stumbled upon had I forced myself to write more frequently.

Susan Orlean writes about her passion for writing.

Susan Orlean image courtesy of www.susanorlean.com

Occasional discomfort, both physical and emotional, is one of the burdens of being a narrative writer.  This isn’t a desk job.  As much as I might resist getting out there, it’s the only thing that works.  Every time I push myself out the door, I try to remember that there will be a payoff.  Often when I’m out reporting, my deepest desire is to go home.  By forcing myself to stay out there, I usually discover something on which the whole story turns.

Orlean writes about taking pride in her work.  I’ve heard reporters talk about loving being out there chasing a story, being in a new setting everyday.  My passion for writing more closely resembles Orlean’s.  I like reading my work, well I do when it’s good, that’s why I started writing for fun when i was 15 and why I chose to try and pursue it as a career.

Whatever grunt work goes into it, it is important to remember that something is going to come out of it that you will be proud to have your name on.  That is what I took from Orlean’s essay, and I couldn’t agree more.