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I’m in the same boat as are you Matthew. I feel that way with respect to what write on my resume about my career accom­plish­ments. I’m fairly mod­est when it comes to toot­ing my own horn. But, more impor­tantly I’ve found myself obsess­ing over what to write in terms of what will get my resume noticed. 

More impor­tantly, and on a dif­fer­ent note, I have a lot of “writ­ers noise” going on in my head as it relates to the screen­play I would like to start and fin­ish. I have ideas and con­cepts float­ing around in my head, but have the hard­est time com­mit­ting those ideas (no mat­ter how large or small) to paper. I hope your other writ­ing friends leave feed­back on this post as I’m inter­est­ing in learn­ing tips to over­com­ing these issues as well. 

Cheers!
–dcm

I’m flat­tered you think of me as a “writer” but the two things I’ve writ­ten I did in about 20 min­utes. I don’t keep a jour­nal and I feel like I can’t write “real” stuff because I don’t know how and I’m not pas­sion­ate enough about it to learn.…sorry I don’t have any advice!

You count Linda…very much so.  You are a tal­ented writer. I like the way that you tell sto­ries in your columns. A num­ber of peo­ple have said that I do the same with my writ­ing. It makes me feel good to think that I’m not just rambling.

I can’t imag­ine that all of your pieces for the Gazette are under the gun. What about your columns? How do you work through those? Do note high­lights and fill in, or do you sim­ply sit down with an idea and start bang­ing out copy?

I hope you all are doing ok! Let’s talk soon.

Thanks for the com­ment Dana. I know exactly what you mean about writ­ing up com­pli­men­tary, but not too flow­ery, things about your­self on a resume/CV. I try to keep my CV up to date so that I don’t jammed up try­ing to cre­ate some­thing that sounds com­pe­tent, and not just a bunch of fluffy BS.

I seem to remem­ber you talk­ing about want­ing to pen a screen­play. That’s awe­some! I can see how devel­op­ing a screen­play could be daunt­ing, because you have to not only think up the sce­nar­ios, but draft dia­log that fits and give char­ac­ters a par­tic­u­lar voice. I don’t know much about screen­play writ­ing, but I think that you want to develop you story first, and then make your char­ac­ters come to life. I sus­pect that you might become quite com­fort­able with the process if you mapped out your story and char­ac­ters. I don’t know. I’m just pulling stuff out of my butt.  I have enter­tained the idea of writ­ing a novel. It would be the same issue of iden­ti­fy­ing and devel­op­ing char­ac­ters. It would be par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing for me, because I don’t read much fiction. 

If you ever need some­one to read some­thing you’ve writ­ten, even if it’s just a story or char­ac­ter map, please know that you can count on me.

Thanks Adri­enne. You pro­vide a lot of food for thought. I think there is the issue of peo­ple being more inclined to “Like” some­thing, instead of leav­ing full-blown com­ments. Addi­tion­ally, I also think peo­ple are just over­whelmed, or bom­barded, with infor­ma­tion and con­tent. It’s hard to keep up, and I’m not one to keep pro­mot­ing my work by post­ing mul­ti­ple posts on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google+.

As for the writ­ing, I’m speak­ing most imme­di­ately about pieces on my blog, but at some point, I would like to take chance at writ­ing a much longer piece.  The only time I thought about ask­ing peo­ple about what they might want me to write about is when I enter­tained the idea of respond­ing to ques­tions (rela­tion­ships, tech­nol­ogy cul­tural issues, etc.). 

Writ­ing has always come easy to me, but when it the flow was best was when I was in col­lege, and had to write for my many lit­er­a­ture classes.  I think com­ing up with things to write about is less of an issue. It’s more about flesh­ing out the ini­tial idea so that it has enough form and sub­stance to make sense. 

I don’t know if I nec­es­sar­ily agree with the idea that one can­not write with the inten­tion of hav­ing peo­ple read­ing and lov­ing my work, but I under­stand your point.

Thanks, again, for your comments.

I feel incred­i­bly lucky that I make a liv­ing putting words on a page.  My job is to put some­thing where there is noth­ing (which is why I think I relate to the chef trade as much as I do because we have sim­i­lar tasks at hand that way).  Here’s what I can tell you:

1) There is no such thing as writer’s block. It’s an attempt to jus­tify lazi­ness, or lean on a crutch.  It’s a way to jok­ingly, meekly label one’s inabil­ity to pro­duce.  Some­times the mind has to lie dor­mant; that’s part of the writ­ing process.  A writer knows how to rec­og­nize that and step away from the work and know that he or she will come back to it the next hour/day and push onward.

2) Apart from my paid writ­ing work, I write at least 1,000 words a day.  I get up at 5:30, walk the dog, pour some cof­fee, and sit down at the com­puter. I open a new Word doc­u­ment and I just write.  Some­times, it’s about some­thing I’ve been think­ing about for days and just need to get onto the screen and out of my head.  Other times, it’s hard to do.  I have a lot (A LOT) of pages that say “this sucks, I suck, I can’t think of any­thing, I hate every­thing, this is awful” but I push through it and don’t stop until I have 1,000 words.  And, because I have to leave my house by 8 to get to the office, there’s no lol­ly­gag­ging or dawdling on the screen.  I just do it.  I don’t try and write the Great Amer­i­can Novel.  I don’t edit as I go.  I just write, save, and move on with my day.  On week­ends, I go back and re-read some of it and pull the good stuff into out­lines or other pieces I’m work­ing on.  But, I never delete it, because you never ever know when some of it is going to come in handy for a future project.

3) I keep notes/URLs/ideas/etc. in Ever­note, but I rarely go back and refer to them.  I also have note­books scat­tered through­out the house related to var­i­ous projects and, as orga­nized as I am about every­thing else in my life, those note­books are a hot mess and I like it that way.

4) I love the Scrivener pro­gram, and find it great for out­lin­ing and sto­ry­board­ing book ideas and big writ­ing projects.  I usu­ally end up writ­ing every­thing in Word, though.

5) I do not strug­gle with “fil­ter­ing a mil­lion thoughts and rumi­na­tions” because I don’t fil­ter or rumi­nate.  My fin­gers vomit it all onto the screen. 

6) I used to really beat myself up over what I thought was pro­cras­ti­na­tion.  I would get an assign­ment from a client, or have a dead­line with a pub­lisher or mag­a­zine, and I would not even start writ­ing it until a day or two before it was due.  Didn’t mat­ter if it was 400 words or 10,000 words.  I would write and write and write in those last 48–72 hours in a cul­mi­na­tion of crazy because I’d spent the pre­vi­ous weeks con­sciously look­ing at my com­puter and choos­ing to do some­thing else (clean my light-switch plates with a Q-Tip, orga­nize the cab­i­nets in the laun­dry room, orga­nize my book­shelves by color of book spine, scrub my hard­wood floors by hand — any­thing so that I didn’t “have time” to write).  I actu­ally saw a cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­pist for a few months because I thought I had a bad habit to break.  Turns out?  This is  my writ­ing process.  I get an assign­ment, and I uncon­sciously am writ­ing it in my head.  I (kind of unknow­ingly) absorb what I need to over those non-writing weeks in prepa­ra­tion for the actual writ­ing, and then when I sit down that day or two before and just spew it all out, my first draft just needs a lit­tle pol­ish­ing, and it’s good to go from there.  It’s just how my brain works.  I wish it wasn’t that way (because it is, hon­estly, phys­i­cally and men­tally exhaust­ing and I can barely func­tion the next day) but it’s how I do my best work.  So, I honor it now and I don’t beat myself up emo­tion­ally, or label it as pro­cras­ti­na­tion. It’s just how I churn out my best work.

7) To write, you have to read.  Fic­tion is great, but don’t ignore non-fiction (espe­cially mem­oirs).  When you can, lis­ten to the audio ver­sion of mem­oirs, but only when it’s the author read­ing it.  Two of the best ones I’ve ever lis­tened to (and read the print ver­sions of) are Steve Martin’s “Born Stand­ing Up” and Rob Lowe’s “Sto­ries I Only Tell My Friends.”  They are remark­able exam­ples of voice, nar­ra­tive, strong sto­ry­telling, and hon­est engage­ment.  Chris Buckley’s “Los­ing Mum and Pup” is one I only lis­tened to and didn’t read the print ver­sion of, but found it haunt­ingly com­pelling and hon­est.
There are two, and only two, books you should read about the writ­ing process: On Writ­ing (Stephen King) and Mak­ing a Lit­er­ary Life (Car­olyn See).  King’s book is actu­ally best con­sumed in audio ver­sion because he reads it.  See’s book is very well writ­ten, but all you need to know from her book is this:  

“You know the last thing in the world peo­ple want to hear from you, the
very last thing they’re inter­ested in? The fact that you always have
wanted to write, that you cher­ish dreams of being a writer, that you
wrote some­thing and got rejected once, that you believe you have it in
you — if only the peo­ple around you would give you a chance — to write a
very cred­i­ble, if not great, Amer­i­can novel. They also don’t want to
hear that if you did start to write, there would be some things you just
couldn’t write about.…So don’t tell them. Don’t tell them any­thing about it. Espe­cially when
you’re think­ing about begin­ning. Keep it to your­self. Be dis­creet. Be
secre­tive. There’s time enough — all the time in the world — to let them in
on the secret, to let them know who and what you really are.…The won­der­ful thing about your inner life is that it’s your inner life.
Think about your writ­ing when you’re mak­ing toast or suf­fer­ing through a
meet­ing at work or spac­ing out watch­ing base­ball on TV. Something’s in
your head, or your chest, that wants to get out. But keep it in there
for a while.…Remember that when you start writ­ing on a reg­u­lar basis you can do it
unob­tru­sively, on the sly. Peo­ple don’t have to know about it until
you’re con­fi­dent and ready. You can be writ­ing a thou­sand words a
day with­out any­one notic­ing. But
you can think about writ­ing all day and all night, the way the
virtuous-seeming woman yearns for her lover or the stalker, who works
behind the cash reg­is­ter at the con­ve­nience store, dreams about his
prey.  Write your stuff, hide it, let it stack up. Reread it.
Don’t worry about it. Don’t look for per­fec­tion. To switch metaphors,
your first writ­ing is as del­i­cate as a seedling. Don’t show it to some
yahoo who wouldn’t know an orchid from kudzu.  Your thou­sand words
only takes min­utes, moments. This first chap­ter, short but impor­tant,
sug­gest­ing your first step, came in at 1,275 words and took an hour and
fif­teen min­utes to write in the first draft. I’ve had years to think
about silence, though, lots of time to fig­ure out what I’m pass­ing on to
you now: Pro­tect your­self. Be care­ful whom you tell. Because the last
thing on earth peo­ple liv­ing an ordi­nary life want to hear about is how
you want to be a writer.”

I love your ques­tion. I feel blessed to be able to write for a liv­ing. I write about what inter­ests me.. just like you do. I write in bits and pieces. I write on my couch, at the table, in my bed. 

There are times, I don’t write at all. I have to some­times walk away and fill my well. I have to be open to allow the ideas to come in and fill my mind. 

When I strug­gle for ideas or feel like I have noth­ing to write about, it is because a) I am bored b) I need a break or c) I need to fill the well. 

I hope this helps a little. 

Thanks Mon­ica! The well a anal­ogy makes per­fect sense. I think that I some­times con­fuse a trickle of water for a river. Each has value, but I need to dis­cern, and appre­ci­ate, that difference. 

I think the key is to release the pres­sure I put on myself to push out con­tent, and let things just come to me. I’m under no dead­lines for con­tent, so I rec­og­nize that beat­ing myself for not writ­ing long-form pieces is just silly. 

Thanks for shar­ing your thoughts!

Excel­lent info!  Thank you!  I, too, find myself using Scrivener for longer pieces.  It’s a great application.  

I’m also glad you men­tioned read­ing, as well.  What I do find, how­ever, is that I often try too hard to emu­late great writ­ers.  For exam­ple, I just fin­ished read­ing Vic­tor Hugo’s “Les Mis­er­ables” for the sec­ond time and it is quite sim­ply some of the most beau­ti­ful and col­or­ful prose I’ve ever read.  In the back of my mind, though, I find myself try­ing to emu­late him.  And, as beau­ti­ful as his writ­ing is, it’s not my voice.  I think I need to be care­ful in draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from great works and betray­ing my own voice in an effort to be more like others.

First of all in the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure (insert lawyer speak here.…) I am not a writer.  I have to admit I stum­bled on your blog because I love your wife on “The Chew”…but I do love your project Oper­a­tion Twenty12.   I am a lawyer as well who at one time dreamed of becom­ing a writer.  I used to write all the time, and as a mat­ter fact was an Eng­lish major (minor in Eco­nom­ics) but also pur­sued another pas­sion, the law.  But I found that after law school and becom­ing a lawyer, I rarely wrote for the pure sake of writ­ing.  The writ­ing that I used to enjoy.  I enjoyed your post because you said some­thing that I decided to do more of this year, which is sim­ply write…your post and the image you sent your­self last year inspired me as well.…so Write On!!!! And thanks for the inspiration:)

Matthew, thanks again for your response.  It’s funny that you men­tioned that peo­ple say that you write all the time, but we know that legal writ­ing is so much dif­fer­ent than any other writ­ing !!! I like your com­ment about hav­ing to be “suc­cinct with­out being terse, which is some­times cre­ative”… One of the goals that I have decided to embark upon is to try to read (or read again) as many “lit­er­ary clas­sics” as I can.  As you know, law school/and the legal read­ing we have to do in the pro­fes­sion is totally dif­fer­ent than read­ing for pure plea­sure, and I found that at some point in time, I was so burned out after law school and read­ing legal “stuff” I wanted to read noth­ing more than the tabloids while stand­ing in the gro­cery store check-out line:) (And my one guilty plea­sure is the Sun­day New York Times;) But I picked up a few great clas­sics at some great used book­stores here in Michi­gan (did I read you are from K-Zoo?  I was born in Chi-town but grew up in the “D”…and reside here in Michi­gan still;) I’m read­ing a great book that was a present for Christ­mas, “Hem­ing­ways Boat” which inspired me to pick up a few of his classics.…During our cold win­ters here in Michi­gan (I’m sure you remem­ber:) I plan to read a few of Hemingway’s clas­sics and check out some of the places that inspired him to write here in Michi­gan (when it warms up!) Again, really enjoy­ing your blog, the goals that you have decided to set for your­self (more real­is­tic than some I have read) You inspire and encour­age with­out being judg­men­tal.  Loved the Ams­ter­dam pics and com­ments on your trip, look for­ward to hear­ing about you and your beau­ti­ful wife’s trip to Tokyo.  Look­ing for­ward to more of your writ­ing soon.…