Building the Writing Muscle

This past weekend in Washington, D.C. for MDA Hill Day, I had the pleasure of meeting and speaking with Ira Walker.  In addition to being an MDA National Ambassador and an entertaining speaker, he also recently published a novel: Torn Branches. 

I asked him about his experience writing a novel and how he did it. Nothing in his background pointed to somebody who I would expect to write and publish a large work of fiction.

He said to me what I've heard several other writers tell me in the past. He said you have to practice. Write for an hour and half every day, he said, and then the writing muscle will grow strong and you'll one day find that you can write a book.

My partner recently wrote a book. Not a novel, but a technical manual: Getting Started With Grafana. I asked him what he thought about Ira's advice. He said that the "write every day" approach would never work for him. However, he's always been very talented with language and explaining complex topics. He's also good at letting deadlines put a fire under his butt. Apparently the publisher was very surprised by how well he met his deadlines, and this is not a typical approach. He said the "write every day" approach sounded like it would work for me temperamentally.

During the COVID era, when I was running Quaranteam, part of what we were offering was a weekly newsletter to our members. Weekly was a bit aspirational. Writing these was challenging - I was sending them on an email distro list to 250 of my friends and friends of friends, what will I say wrong this time? I got thoughtful feedback from one of my Admins when I shared this struggle. She's a counselor, and also has a master's degree in creative writing from Emerson, so I valued her feedback.

She told me that she thought I was struggling because my newsletters were always written from the heart.

To give you an example from September 2020:

We might feel overwhelmed.  We might feel isolated.  But we are together.  We might not see the impact of our work from where we stand now, but it is vital for the future that we are building together.  Like it or not, we are living through history right now.  We are at a critical juncture to shape the world for decades to come, even though we might never have the perspective to fully appreciate the trails we are blazing or understand how they all intertwine together.

Wow, listen to me go! Somebody get me a pulpit! No wonder I found writing these draining, I was always shooting the moon. Wish me luck, maybe I can learn how to deliver consistency.