30 Days Challenge 26, Ordinary

Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. 

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are our most potent at our most ordinary. And yet most of us discount our “ordinary” because it is, well, ordinary. Or so we believe. But my ordinary is not yours. Three things block us from putting down our clever and picking up our ordinary: false comparisons with others (I’m not as good a writer as _____), false expectations of ourselves (I should be on the NYTimes best seller list or not write at all), and false investments in a story (it’s all been written before, I shouldn’t bother). What are your false comparisons? What are your false expectations? What are your false investments in a story? List them. Each keep you from that internal knowing about which Emerson writes. Each keeps you from making your strong offer to the world. Put down your clever, and pick up your ordinary.

I don't know but I probably have put down every false expectation already. I love to write, that's the reason why I keep at it. Writing fanfiction does that for you, your expectations aren't that high anymore, you write just as much for yourself as for others who will read it. I don't have the expectation I will be a famous writer one day or a published one. I know that there are better writers but I also know that I am not that bad, there are worse writers as well! If I read my own short stories sometimes and the twists and turns a story makes I am sometimes surprised at my own writing and wonder why I can't make it through a novel. Why I can't make it even through a longer fanfic with multiple chapters? I think it's because I don't have the patience (yet) and give a lot of the story away too early, or am too hasty to start another one.
The way I work isn't the way others work. I know that. I don't sit on a story for weeks or months on end. I sit down, start writing and the story comes and writes itself. I often don't know myself how it's going to end when I begin writing it. But when it's finished I am often pleasantly surprised at how it has ended.
You should never compare yourself to others I think. You are you and so is your writing. As Daan once said to me; You are writing for yourself first and foremost.
That's true of course; If anyone wants to read it, fine, but you want to write it and that's more important.

© KH