Writing is skating on a vert ramp
Writing is not easy. It scares a lot of people, mostly writers. Sitting there, face to face with the unwritten, murmuring wordlessly text is hard. Not running away is a habit to be cultivated and nurtured all life.
It takes guts to sit, start and keep unearthing treasures from the depths of “your” mind.
As David Amerland puts it:
It’s not the ability to spell, nor the skill to string words and sentences in a grammatically correct order. It’s more like the ability to see something beneath the surface of the world, abstract it, and then render it in a code that increases access to it, by those who see it.
cit. The Fear of Writing
A metaphor to alleviate the fear of writing
Imagine a vert ramp.
Writing is at times like sliding that ramp. It is hard, easy, scary and joyful all in one.
It goes like this:
First you stand there and writing feels super hard, then you bravely slide down to the area where you might start swinging back and forth wondering What the skate is writing? Several “to write or not to write” thoughts later, you’ve surrendered to the need to share and you slide up the other side of the ramp to the point where writing feels like a piece of cake, you gain momentum and “catch air”, happily able to sketch some thoughts and concepts in the noosphere for a few brief brave moments.
And then it all starts all over again.
Writing is oscillating by essence
There is part in this heuristic process during which writing is all about writing. When the energy of this part is depleted, comes another source – the doubt that writing is not about writing at all. The dynamics of this precious uncertainty gives birth to the urge to search, to know more, to hunt for parallels, experiences, stories. And then, for a very short period of time and thinking, comes the idea that writing is a five-finger exercise. It starts and ends with a simple imperative: Let go.
At that moment of letting go, comes the sweetest thing – the point of gaining momentum and drawing concepts in the noosphere.
How to build an imaginary vert ramp?
The imaginary vert ramp for writers to slide along can be built from the thoughts and things that are the inventory of their minds. Listed in the image below, these fascination points are not only the building blocks of the imaginary vert ramp but also the unexpected doors to undiscovered patterns and to structures waiting to be mapped.
The list is an excerpt from The Fascination Factor (and how you can use it to write books) [link to the pdf]
An attempt for a sketch in the noosphere
We are a feeling in someone else’s heart and life. Making that feeling a worthy read is worth sliding along the edges of truth on an imaginary vert ramp.