The answer is yes and no. Writers spend a good part of the time with their characters and actions for their characters twirling in their heads... thinking. Some call it percolating, others call it day dreaming, and yet others may call it procrastination. Keeping all those thoughts in your mind though and not on paper may be all of the above and could not be defined as writing.
Thinking about writing isn't writing if you never put pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard. We are not talking about publishing here or seeing your byline. We aren't even talking about revised and polished work. We are simply talking about getting those thoughts in your head onto the written page. That action makes you a writer even if you never get published.
Saying you are a writer when you have not written so much as anything more than your grocery list doesn't make you a writer. It makes you a wanna be. Writers write. And all of this goes back to having three major writing goals, action plans for each of those goals, and using some of your time every day or every week to put those actions into play. Simply said, a writer writes with purpose.
When life gets in the way and keeps you from your writing it never keeps ideas from formulating in your heart and your brain. Take note of pain, sadness, and all happy things happening and record feelings or key words that will help you recall the incidents later to put on paper. Keeping in tune with what you feel, see, smell, and experience makes real life the percolating part of your writing process. Don't allow real life to assist you in procrastination. That won't make you a writer. Pulling those real life details out later to weave into a paragraph or chapter makes you a writer.
If it is in your heart to write as it is with mine, the seed to becoming a full grown writer has been planted. It is our job to tend to the seed by practicing our craft so at harvest our crop will be plentiful in the form of many pages of written words, our words. We are writers. It will never be enough for us to be thinkers so what will you write today?
Terri Forehand is a nurse, writer, and recently a quilt shop owner. She writes from the hills of Brown County Indiana where she resides with her husband, several rescue dogs, and 5 rescue cats. Visit her blog at http://terri-forehand.blogspot.com and her author site at www.terriforehand.webnode.com
8 comments:
Hi Terri,
I've written many a scene in my head before putting pen to paper - or fingers to keyboard.
Maria
I'm often caught lying in a hammock by family who ask, "What are you doing?" My response: "I'm writing."
As a writer it's kind of mandatory to think about what you're going to write - it's part of the process, but as you mentioned thinking about what you're going to write doesn't make you a writer. You need to actually write.
You're right, Terri, and no matter how much thinking about writing you do, it isn't writing until you get it down. Writing takes practice and persistence and though planning, observing, and thinking about it are all part of the process, it doesn't matter until it's out.
Thinking is writing when it's preceeded, ceeded or postceeded by actual writing!
Sometimes I write in bed in the morning...I call it dreaming a manuscript into being. But then I have to write it, especially before I lose it.
Nicely put Widdershins!
A reminder to me - stay true to my goals or I'll keep thinking and dreaming!
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