Writing Longer

I’ve noticed I don’t write very long pieces of writing. As a minimalist, Spartan-loving renunciate, expressing myself in short bits of tweet-length sound bites is very appealing. Like lines of the Yoga Sutras, or famous quotes that impact the listener with the force of a sledgehammer and the accuracy of a needle.

Yet I’m finding that I am shying away from writing long pieces, not necessarily because the shorter one communicates better or makes the reader think, but because I’m actually afraid of getting lost in my thoughts. I am unable to write a cohesive essay or story.

So I’d like to change that. Beginning right now. I’d like to start writing pieces more than 750 words, as an exercise for my brain. It should allow me to organize my thoughts better, and handle topics better.

750 words. That’s a lot more writing I have to do until I get to there. And I’ll have to apologize in advance for the crap that the first few pieces will inevitably be. But, as paraphrased from NaNoWriMo, “There will be pages and pages of crap. But there will be diamonds in the rough, too.”

I almost feel like I’m going to have to do stream-of-consciousness stuff for a while, until I get into the groove of things.

One of the challenges I find is that I cannot stay on topic. As I write, I get bored of the topic, and I don’t like what I write when I’m bored. So I usually search for my feelings, search for exactly how I feel, and then pour out onto words. Then I prune, prune, prune, until I get a neatly trimmed bonsai of verbiage, the essence of what I wanted to say.

Unfortunately that usually cuts out all the examples I could give, the entertaining stories I want to fit, the relevance to my life, why it matters to the reader, etc.

This is a perfect example of my writer’s block, also my premature-optimization of the writing. I’m running out of things to write about long pieces. I’m running out of non-redundant stuff, anyway. So instead of writing redundant topics, I halt.

I’ve noticed that I’m also throwing in a lot of fluff words. Adjectives, etc. Totally ignoring “Omit needless words.”

Perhaps one of the reasons I have this issue is because I read Elements of Style. “Omit needless words.” I know how to trim, but how do I grow?

Okay, halfway there.

It’s interesting how I can criticize others’ writing so easily. I see articles written by other people and I judge their writing style, their structure, their dry language, etc. Yet when I try to write something to match merely their length, I’m struggling. I can feel that same critic harshly reading each word I type, asking, “Where is this going?”

I am comforting my ego, “Hey, at least it’s honest.” But I have trouble verifying that one, too.

“Where is this going?” There is no destination. I don’t know. But writing longer pieces is definitely unknown territory for me, at least when it comes to writing for myself. (I’ve had to do this for school, but it was a while ago, and I didn’t have to self-motivate.)

Just like asana practice, I’ll just have to focus and write. Just like balancing on one leg while stretching with my eyes closed, I’ll be shaky and worried the whole time about how it looks, but in the end, it’s the effort that counts. The repeated effort, that is: once isn’t enough. And since I’m done with teacher training, I’ll have plenty of time to write!

I’m reminded of the writing exercises that are floating around the net. Perhaps they would be a good starting point, in the future, for growing words in this garden of…whatever.

750 words is a lot to write.

I haven’t even revised yet. But that’s okay, this post will be perfect as it is. And it is, in a way. But that’s a topic for another post.

Fluff fluff fluff. I’m definitely filling up space to reach that magic number.

Perhaps in the future I should start with a warning: long and incomprehensible.

But hey, this is my site, and to share my life, I am presenting this raw experiment, this raw exercise, in trying to exercise my writing muscle. Hopefully someone out there will be able to take, perhaps not the actual content of this post, but the motivation behind it, the metadata, and be inspired to put in the work to go chase their dreams, reach for higher consciousness, YOU CAN DO IT!

I did it!