The Qwertyrash Blogs

Deb McDonnell aka Scribbling Damselfly, provides a wonderful insight, with the assistance of Natalie Goldberg, into writing and overcoming writer’s block

I’ve seen this advice before, in the form of Give yourself permission to write a shit first draft — but that last line, about writing without a destination, suddenly unpacked a whole new level of this advice for me. Writing a cruddy first draft is all very well, because it’s not about deliberately sitting down to write crud: it’s about writing through self-doubts and lack of trust and perspective.
But lately it hasn’t been working so fully for me, and Goldberg’s snippet above unpacked why. Because letting myself write crap isn’t my current rut. It’s writing to a (frustratingly, stubbornly unknown) destination that’s got me stuck at the moment.

I like that destination thing. It’s so spot on. So often we think we are the ones in charge of the story. We think it’s up to us to come up with the next word, sentence, paragraph, page or chapter; with the next scene or twist.

No bloody wonder we get writer’s block! “I can’t think what to write!” we exclaim, totally exasperated.

That’s destination focus. That’s trying to be the writer instead of the scribe.

The writer lives within and never shows her face. She is just a voice. She patiently waits for you to listen, and be her scribe, to write down her story. Sometimes she’s not there - popped out to the loo, nipped off for a week at the beach. And she comes back to find you’ve tried writing without her. The results disastrous and depression inducing.

Our job is scribing and editing. And don’t ask her how it ends because most times she won’t tell you until it’s time.

Read source article: and the angels will weep for you » scribbling damselfly

writingwriter’s blockmotivation

I have the audio version of the Natalie Goldberg book she refers too, Writing Down the Bones and highly recommend it.

You can get the print copy from Amazon:

“Writing Down the Bones” (Natalie Goldberg)