Three Reasons You Don’t Write and Four Reasons You Should

You have a great idea for a screenplay, a TV pilot, a novel, a memoir, a play, an essay. It’s been in your head for years. Here are three reasons you aren’t writing it:

1. It’s so much easier to talk about your idea. But the thought of writing that first sentence, let alone ten more? Or ten thousand? Too hard.

2. Writing feels like an indulgence. You don’t have time to waste, therefore you don’t have time to write. You have a family to raise, a job you need to keep, friendships that need tending. How can you in good conscience spend time on a project that’s all about you? Not happening.

3. What if you finally sit down to write and you have nothing to say? Or worse, what if you stink? Your eighth grade English teacher said you had potential, but maybe she was just being nice. What if you find out you don’t have any talent? Better to dream.

So those are the big three: no confidence, no time, no idea if you have any talent. But that voice in your head won’t go away. You want to try to write. I know you do. So here are four reasons you should:

1. If you’re still talking about an idea after all this time, there’s a good chance there’s a story in there. Just start. Don’t be clever, don’t try to be anything but truthful. Just write down the first sentence that comes to mind and see what happens. Maybe you’ll want to write the next sentence. And then the next. Or maybe you’ll want to get up and walk around the room. Ignore that impulse and sit there! That’s what writers do. Tomorrow when you sit down to write again don’t read what you wrote yesterday. Just. Keep. Going.

2. There’s a myth about writing that I’d like to quash right now: you don’t need eight hours a day to write or five hours or even two. You need as much time as you’ve got. Period. If you ride the subway for 15 minutes, take that time to write. If you’ve got an hour for lunch, grab that time to write. The more you fall in love with writing the more time you’ll free up in your schedule to do it.

3. Every human has something to say. You have life experience. You have a point view about many things. That said, if you want to be a writer, you need to know how to connect to your audience. Not my audience. Not Stephen King’s audience. Your audience. Because…

4. That’s what it’s all about: connection. If, during a performance of one of my plays, someone in the fifth row feels something-- maybe their heart opens--I go home happy that night. We are hard wired to want to connect to each other. Writing connects you to another human. And in the process, something else often happens. Writing connects you to yourself: to your soul and to your heart. So, what it comes down to is really this: the one reason you should write is because you want to.