{via} Today I’m combining two days—Day 6 and Day 7—of the 15 Habits of Great Writers Challenge; after working separately on each of them I realized they tied perfectly together.
Day 6—Jeff Goins shocked us all when he told us to stop trying to be so original and start stealing.
What?!
He quoted Picasso, “Good artists copy, great artists steal”; and reminded us:
“A good writer curates. She scoops up all the little pieces of inspiration around her, melding and mashing them, putting it all together in a hodgepodge mosaic that makes something new.”
I felt relieved after reading that because I’ve been
Part of being a writer is learning from others, gathering different ideas, and making them your own.
Day 7—Jeff mentioned in his post title that great writers start ugly. He said, “You can first make it ugly, or not make it at all. There is nothing else.”
His challenge? To make something ugly and leave it that way (temporarily).
Initially after reading his challenge, I planned to share one of the several posts in my “to edit” folder, but then I read through the Bonus Content article he included in his post.
Quickly, an idea popped into my mind (and this is the part where I credit Jeff Goins and his articles, How to Structure Any Piece of Writing, and Great Writers Start Ugly the combination of both ideas which
It Starts At Ugly
Every story has three parts
But if I want to write it out
I simply must begin
The first draft is the ugliest of all
Too ugly for eyes to see
But isn’t that better than nothing at all
Dare I say…necessity?
For if I start at ugly
From there it can only improve
And soon before I know it
I’ve found my writing groove
The writing starts in ugliness
Planting little seeds
Patiently I plod along
Plucking out the weeds
Editing away the rawness
It comes along very well
Soon the beauty blossoms
Through the story I have to tell
But what if I had neglected to start?
Ashamed of ugly to be shown
No story ever written
It’s beauty left unknown
Smiling over the comment about being relieved because some things you are reading are showing up in you writing! That is so me! I was writing something recently and went back and checked a book I love an sure enough it was like a mirror of it. So I tweaked it to be my voice, but still -- it does show up. How can it not?
ReplyDeleteYou have a sweet sweet family! Love meeting another writer, girl!
Cute poem. :)
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