If the writing is what makes someone a writer, then I think a requirement to sustaining the habit is the perspective Keni mentions:
... on any given day and all I had to do was focus on [a topic]. A comment, a question, a movie or an incident in a day would be a prompt to write. Now I don't automatically think about writing.
I consider this The Writer's Perspective.
This perspective has little to do with mechanical motions like scribbling pen onto paper or tapping keys of a laptop. It's a perspective that permeates all the other parts of life. Whatever affects you in life, not only moves you as a human experiencing the chemistry of emotions, but also as a writer. Anytime the world intrigues you, some gears within you begin to turn. Eventually when enough of those gears spin together at the right speed you are now ideating ways to turn your intrigue, your curiosity, your essence into language.
Non writers also have this too. You could replace Writer in The Writer's Perspective for any other craft. Anybody who is known for doing a thing will no doubt have a deep entanglement between everything that happens in life and their thing. Even, or especially, subconsciously.
Non writers also have this too. You could replace Writer in The Writer's Perspective for any other craft. Anybody who is known for doing a thing will no doubt have a deep entanglement between everything that happens in life and their thing. Even, or especially, subconsciously.
Pitfalls of The Writer's Perspective
I believe that if you don't write enough two things can happen.
- The connection between life and language can wane to the point where interesting experiences no longer cause you to think of how to turn it into words.
- The connection can remain strong, but the output becomes gummed up. Even though you experience your days thinking of how to turn that into language, you can't seem to do it when you try to actually write
#1 simply happens when you no longer find writing to be the best medium for your expression. It probably means you should find something else. At least temporarily. Writing might come back to you later, and probably will since we're such language-centric creatures.
#2 happens when you don't write enough. It's impossible to dump the breadth and depth of your life life into language in one go. There is a limited bandwidth to how much of what's in your head can be dumped into language output. When you don't write enough, the amount that's outputted lags too far behind what's accumulating in your head. And then you commit the cardinal sin of thinking you can just start outputting bigger ideas. You can make up for lost output by cramming more ideas into a small amount of output.
You can probably already guess that I argue that that's impossible. I'll write about that more later though.
Actionable Takeaway:
When struggling to write, just write the most easy thing to write at that time. If you find that it's only personal things you wish not to share then write it privately. On Adagia. Haha just kidding, you can write it wherever.
Thank you.