"Just Write": about starting, persevering and becoming good at what you do

The activity of writing in and of itself does something weird to my thoughts. I haven't written as consistently as I have during this last week in ages. If ever. Some of these blog posts just flow out in one go, others take almost the entire day to come up with a subject, and something more or less interesting to write about that subject. Having written down what I have over the last week has given me quite some peace of mind. And the desire to write some more.

Today I went to rehearsal with a couple of friends. We are starting a band. It's in a very early stage of its conception, and it has been for quite a long time. We'll see what comes of it.
In any case, the creative juices were flowing today, but not towards what I would write.
So I just sat down and started doing what I'm doing now: just writing.

When I started playing guitar, I was obsessed by it. It was all I did for about two or three years. At the very beginning, when I was just learning, I fell ill during an easter holiday break. I had nothing else to do but play guitar for two weeks. By the end of those two weeks, I knew almost as much as I do now, 25 years later, about playing guitar. But I wasn't any good yet. You get good at something by doing that thing. Lots. Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" is a very interesting book about that. Its core thought is the theory that to become exceptionally good at something, you have to spend ten thousand hours doing it.

Jacques Brel said talent is nothing else than the desire to do something, combined with the sweat of hard work. I'll link to the interview below.

So anyway. Here I am. I didn't know what I was going to write. I just sat down, started writing down what popped into my head, and I came up with a couple of interesting things to write about.

I don't consider myself a writer by any means.

But I'm writing.

And that's better than the other way around.



Here's the Jacques Brel interview that I found very inspiring:
(don't worry you Angloes, it has English subtitles)

And here's a fragment from "Finding Forrester". I think it's a rather average movie as a whole, but this fragment has stayed with me ever since I saw the film a long time ago. It's about writing. But I guess it's applicable to any creative undertaking.