write

Encouragement Pages-02/24/2021

There are no shortcuts to writing, and no such things exist. You will only get better at this by doing it. There can be no other way, dear writer. There just isn’t. With this wisdom in your pocket, let me give you this other deposit.

All you seek to write, you can write. At this point, it’s a matter of if you believe you can.

Hint: You can.

With Love & Ink,

JBHarris

Encouragement Pages-12/11/2020

Make today your last day you ask permission to write what you want to write.

Let me tell you a secret: you don’t need anyone’s permission.

Stop waiting for permission that you don’t need, that won’t come to do the work you want to do.

Don’t cheapen your talent, don’t cheapen your gift by waiting for other people to see it to validate it. You don’t need their permission.

You never did. You never will.

With Love & Ink,

JBHarris

Encouragement Pages 05/18/2020

Find your pens.

Toni Morrison said that writers do their best work in the dark. And indeed, the times we are in now, are increasingly devoid of light. Do not despair! You are a writer! You have the light.

You are light.

Thought paper, screen and voice you have the power and capacity to record, confront and rewrite! You mustn’t lose hope… you are the hope.

Find your pens.

With Love & Ink,

JBHarris

The Secret Graveyards: Pencils, Files & Draft Drawers

I believe writing is a form of madness. I do. I suffer from it, and I have since age 8. I dream, I record. I am a witch born of storytelling, accents, dialects and alphabets. I conjure worlds and destroy them as I see fit. In that roux of creativity, here I am.

Yet, here in that lingering immortality just before me….I get scared too.

I see the pages, blank and endless and sometimes I–I just can’t. Sometimes I can only get to a certain part in a story or a WIP and…I stop. But rather than through that energy away, I put a pen on it…and put it in my draft-drawer. I do this in the hope –THE HOPE–I will return to it. I do it in the hope that I will have the strength to complete something that I started. I do it to remind myself the story isn’t over–I just can’t see my way clear yet. But once I do? I will find my way back to it.

There is a drawer in my desk that is stocked with notebooks, pens and other random office supplies. Within the graveyard of writing supplies, are my incomplete thoughts. There are beginnings, full and bright. There the ends of dreams, the beginnings of nightmares, and the lusts of my own flesh. All in this drawer, waiting for me…calling to me in times where I would be, rather be writing.

They call when I say I can’t write.

They persist when I escape the diligence of writing to tweet or post to Instagram.

They haunt when I forget to add to them…or say I don’t need to add to them. Or the biggest writer lie: “I’ll get back to it.”

I have so many stories to tell, and one life to tell them in. Yet, I know I may not…

Encouragement Pages-03/16/2020

I want you to murder your doubt.

It will never have anything constructive–or new!–to say. It will never say anything which will build confidence, massage away anxieties, or rock you to sleep.

It will never tell you to try, but will always tell you the myriad of ways you will fail.

Every time you listen to it…it is death by 1000 cuts.

Stop the bleeding–and write.

Love & Ink,

JBHarris

Encouragement Pages-02/26/2020

Sometimes the peace of mind in which you need to write has to be fought for. It has to be snatched from the trifecta of doubt, self-rejection and distraction. You have to be able to write when the world is–can be–soft or loud.

Writing, writing daily, is a decision that requires discipline and mild suffering. This type of suffering is seen when you decide to forgo that which is comfortable to do something else needed and necessary.

Take the time to write–and take it by force. Do not let the dragons–or their roars–win.

With Love & Ink,

JBHarris