I’m taking a non-fiction adult education writing class this summer. Our instructor told us we’d have assignments every week (8 weeks) but could skip some. I plan to complete them all. I signed up for the course to see how I’d do, to get feedback from an established writer. I want to get my money’s worth. We’re at the midway point and it’s getting tougher every week coming up with something I want to write about, something important enough to take up my sparse free time. Today, after much dread, I grabbed a topic and started writing. As the piece progressed, my dread turned into exhilaration; as the story and details and purpose and meaning started falling into place, my passion came alive. Sometimes external deadlines like course assignments are what we need to get us over the hump and into a better place.
Hurray! Like you, I too would do all the assignments, because then I would feel strong and reliable and besides: I am afraid to let out my inner wimp. A senior citizen once relished her photography course because, she said, she learned to see. I suspect that writing nonfiction causes us to care about the world, because as we care and ponder then the topics just pop in.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean about external demand. Today I can only write on the web because I do so regularly and then I imagine a regular reader who I don't want to let down. (Thank God for friends who occasionally read my stuff.