Writers write

I guess on that last/ first post, what I meant to say was that we are all storytellers.  Perspective writers, I guess would be more like it.  If we have life, we have stories to tell.  Just some of us record those stories (yes, and those voices in our heads).  Others turn their stories and voices into art, public service, you name it.  We, as humans, have an innate need to tell our stories to the world.  Writers write.

This seems obvious.  It's not a given, though.  We had a wonderful speaker at our writers' group last evening who pointed out that the first objective of writing, and especially getting published, is to finish something.  Yes, writers are notorious for wanting to write, nee, needing to write, aching to write, dying to write, compelled to write,... and, yet, we don't always do it.  We start but we don't finish.  We have that gut-burning, heart-pounding, explosive idea that won't get out of our heads, we begin, and then...  


You short story and poetry writers out there are not off the hook here.  Yes, you finish stories and poems.  But you need to put together a body of work.  An anthology.  Do it by theme or chronologically or however, but do it.  Even if it's just for you.  


I am the guiltiest of the guilty here.  Ask my writing friends.  I have not actually finished one complete body of work.  I have published stories in anthologies, and that's great, but I am now a firm believer in getting something together that is a thing you can call your own as a writer.  Again, even if you only share it with yourself.  I am working on my own anthology again, after a year hiatus, as we speak.


Writers write.  Don't we?


Ciao for now.                   Heidi