“[Writing] has always felt like a quest to me,
an adventure into the unknown...”
Steven Beschloss
One of the best things about writing is the travel. And what I’m referring to
is not just the physical travel (of which I have done a fair bit, thanks to
booksignings, client meetings and article assignments) but the other kind of
“travel” — going beyond the confines of our current abilities to explore new
ways of writing, or to learn about new people, places and things.
While it can be useful to have a “writing identity” — that is, be a “medical writer,” a “marketing writer,” a biographer or novelist — every now and then we should take the opportunity to try something new, to apply our writing skills to a different topic, genre or form. In a previous post (Push beyond your "safe zone"), I wrote about taking on the challenge of doing scripts — how what I thought was a weak area (only because I had done so little of it) turned out, at least from the client’s perspective, to be a talent. Had I turned down the job, I would never have known I could do it.
Writing also connects you to people you might not have otherwise met if you hadn't explored the opportunity. In the past few months, I have had the pleasure of interviewing a 70-year-old man who lives on the same 300-acre property his family has owned since 1808, and a woman who retired from teaching to pursue her artwork full-time. In those two cases, while the assignment itself was not particularly lucrative, the enjoyment of talking with those two people outweighed the relatively small pay.
Writing can also take you on another kind of journey — internal, not external, psychological instead of physical. Since my mother died, I have been unable to write about those last weeks of her life, afraid of journeying back to that sad time. But then, a publication was seeking short essays on “Last Moments,” and I let my guard down and drafted a piece that felt good and right and healing. It may or may not be included in the anthology but the real joy came in writing something that turned the memory of loss into a recollection filled with love.
Writing can take you to so many places as long as you make the most of the opportunities it brings.
While it can be useful to have a “writing identity” — that is, be a “medical writer,” a “marketing writer,” a biographer or novelist — every now and then we should take the opportunity to try something new, to apply our writing skills to a different topic, genre or form. In a previous post (Push beyond your "safe zone"), I wrote about taking on the challenge of doing scripts — how what I thought was a weak area (only because I had done so little of it) turned out, at least from the client’s perspective, to be a talent. Had I turned down the job, I would never have known I could do it.
Writing also connects you to people you might not have otherwise met if you hadn't explored the opportunity. In the past few months, I have had the pleasure of interviewing a 70-year-old man who lives on the same 300-acre property his family has owned since 1808, and a woman who retired from teaching to pursue her artwork full-time. In those two cases, while the assignment itself was not particularly lucrative, the enjoyment of talking with those two people outweighed the relatively small pay.
Writing can also take you on another kind of journey — internal, not external, psychological instead of physical. Since my mother died, I have been unable to write about those last weeks of her life, afraid of journeying back to that sad time. But then, a publication was seeking short essays on “Last Moments,” and I let my guard down and drafted a piece that felt good and right and healing. It may or may not be included in the anthology but the real joy came in writing something that turned the memory of loss into a recollection filled with love.
Writing can take you to so many places as long as you make the most of the opportunities it brings.
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