One of the biggest blocks we have as writers nowadays is not running low on ideas, not finding the time to write, or getting stuck with the same words and expressions we have always used. While this can be a little hiccup from time to time, it’s nothing more than a temporary block all serious writers find a way around. The actual enemy to any writer today is that many people do not care anymore.
We can deny how much we care about who or how many people care about our work, but the truth is we are writing for someone to read and appreciate what we are writing; nobody can write only for themselves. We might take that road and say that we would not care about anybody else’s opinion other than ours, but is this satisfying enough? Is this enough fuel for a lifetime full of writing? It might be for some writers, but I think being the only fan of yourself is not going to drive your writing career any further. To be honest, even when you look at it from a different perspective, if writing is made not to be read, it is like bread baked to turn stale and rot without anybody tasting how good it is. Some might disagree with me, but I think it is safe to say that writing interestingly readable stuff and targeting some people with our writing can bring the satisfaction we need to keep on writing.
Nowadays, it is easier than ever to find people with the same interests as you. Social media, for example, is a great place for that; and one can always complain that it is full of trash, but it is full of good things and good people, too. There is one fair thing about the title of this article, and that is nobody cares if nobody knows. Let people know what your writing is about, share your writings with people, don’t be afraid they are going to steal your work because if you come to a point that your work is so tempting to be stolen, you will know that you have already made it. However, the hard truth is that the greatest enemy of writers has never been plagiarism or theft, but obscurity. If you are the fountain, don’t be afraid anyone might take a sip of your water. However, it is also good to know that it is easier than ever to copyright your writings nowadays. I will deal with copyright issues in a separate post, but rest assured; it is a piece of cake.
If social media is not good enough for you, and you want something more concrete, seek out the community you live in and try to find people with the same interests. You can arrange a monthly or even a weekly gathering in a coffee shop where you have the opportunity to recite your poems, read your stories, and share them with others. It is important to mention that by doing this, you are also giving yourself a chance to get into the rhythm of what makes people tick today, in this era, not in the seventies or eighties or even back in Shakespearean times. Meeting people will help you speak the language they do, learn from your fellow writers as much as you would like them to learn from you. If you believe their language is too low of a standard for you, you raise up their standards by being with them, not just theorizing and criticizing from home. Some writers might disagree and argue that they do not want to be affected by the low level of other writers and they want to keep the high level of writing they have even if this means to share their writings with nobody. Well, if that sounds kind of snobbish to you, it certainly does to me. In my opinion, you must speak the people’s language to convey the divine messages you believe you possess. I am not being cynical here; every one of us believes they have something important to say, which makes them decide to write and tell everyone about it. However, if you are there and I do believe you must have something important to say, please say it in a language I understand for if I don’t understand it, it will not be of any importance to me. That is another discussion on its own, I believe, but I am just trying to stress the importance of speaking the language of the era you live in and drive it forward to literary excellence, not the other way round.
One last idea I would like to add to the list of things we can do as writers to beat this block that’s called “Nobody cares” is to enroll in free online courses about poetry, writing, and literature. The fact that these things are free means that the people enrolled in them do not have to be there, but they do want to be there for the love of literature. You might find some good audience there, maybe not in a direct way, but you are certainly going to be networking with people who care about what you care about. You can connect with them in the course and share your writings if that does not contradict with the course’s guidelines, or you can just get to know them there and stay in touch with them on some social media means you use in common. Besides the potential for meeting new people, you do have a lot in common with, these courses provide you with an excellent chance to learn more about the fields you love the most, which are literature and writing. There are a lot of good platforms where you can find excellent free courses online, but I think these two are the best:
Coursera @ www.coursera.org
and Edx @ www.edx.org
If all the things I mentioned above did not seem to help in letting you know that there are a lot of potential people out there who care, please make sure that I do, and I can be on your list of caring people, so you can contact me anytime and share your enthusiasm for writing, as I am sharing it with you in this article.
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