It’s Wednesday. Blog day. I was going to write an Ode to recently turning 44, but as I typed the words, I found myself saying, “So what?”
So you’ve had a birthday. Whoop dee doo. No one wants to hear about that. No one wants to hear anything that I likely blog about every Wednesday. “So what?” I hear my inner critic say ALL THE TIME.
No one will care about your blog, stories, novels, ideas, or observations. My inner critic is nice, eh?
What do I say to that voice that tells me the content I produce will be insignificant and not matter in the grand scheme of things? To that voice I say:
“So what?”
To me, it doesn’t matter if two people or two thousand read what I’ve written. This is a process I do for myself first and foremost. Writing is a way for me to process thoughts and emotions. Sometimes what I write resonates with others. Sometimes it falls flat. But I will say this: No writing is wasted writing. It is all part of the process. Part of how a writer learns the craft. So when something falls flat that we’ve written, we can look back at the work and try to figure out why it didn’t work. Was the voice off? Was the character underdeveloped? Was the plot too scattered? Was the audience I was writing the story for all wrong?
Even in bad writing, there is a lesson to be had. Even in bad blog posts, we can learn about the craft, whether it be writing, art, dance, you name it. If you want to get better at something, you work at it. You fail. You get back up, dust yourself off and try again. It’s how we learn.
So the next time someone or even that voice in your head tells you that something you are doing is pointless, you tell them:
So what?
Danielle Bannister, Author 