Taking Action in Writing

Inertia: is the resistance of any physical object to any change in its state of motion, including changes to its speed and direction. It is the tendency of objects to keep moving in a straight line at constant velocity.

There are many people who love the concept of inertia– some are writers, some are simply average people.   The key to this sentence is ‘average’ and no one wants to be called average, or below average in any way.  So, they fight against inertia, hoping a small change will do something: thinking positive, telling people they will set up a goal.  In a writer this is more subtle.

These writers will talk about changing or improving their writing, they will talk about how they want to make more money, or work less or improve their relationships with other people. They talk about how they want their blog to be seen on the Internet, or how a factor changed it, and they talk about action plans.

They have a problem, there is not a single movement towards action.

Why?

Action, changes hurt.  Changes require a willingness to move away from the direction you are going.This holds true with a business that seems to be going well, but then the rules change. The rules  a writer was comfortable with- and becoming an average writer in the process.

Change is coming, it can be because you want it to be, or it can be because you have been told there is no other choice.  One hurts more than the other.  If a writer cares enough about writing, they will change.

This hit home personally for this blog in the last few months.  It’s a good blog, there are people who come and comment, and there is a strong relationship with many readers on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.  There doesn’t seem to be a need for change does there?

There is.  When it seems there isn’t a need to change a blog or a writing style, there usually is.  This is most true when a writer sees the need for change in their writing.  This blog, my pride and joy, along with my books, was doing fine, but I took a moment to look back and think about what it was offering to others.

I resisted doing this partly because it meant I need to take a lot of action, and partly because I thought I really didn’t need to do as much as was needed.  This is an extreme example of inertia, but it does follow the same idea.  Blogs need maintaining, not just the last few posts, but the older ones as well.

After a while of complaining loudly to my fellow writers on Living a Life of Writing, I sat down and took action- to be a more passionate writer, and to write better content.  Passion is important.

I began from the beginning of the blog and moved forward.


I looked through some older files to see what I can do.


I went back to my older method of writing my first drafts out with pen and paper.

In short, I took action.  Action began to move the blog forward and at a better pace than I thought it could happen.  I didn’t say it was easy, I’m not going to say it’s easy, but it is worth it.  Action helped my blog, and I am in a more positive place as a writer because of this.