Notice that I am not asking, why do you have to write?
The answer to that may be prosaic: I have an assignment, or I want to get a promotion, or I need to earn a degree. Or more dramatic: because I have an inner daemon, because it is my gift, and so on
My question has a very different focus. I want to know why you feel compelled to write about a certain subject. What ideas rattle around your head at night and make you so restless that you get up at 3 in the morning (remember that's it's always 3 A.M. in the Dark Night of the Soul) and put pencil to paper or turn on the computer? In other words, what about your writing really stirs your juices?
When I first taught composition to college students--this is in the Very Old Days of the early 1960's--we worked with standard forms of expository writing such as description, comparison and contrast, argument and such.
Once in a while students would come up a truly creative take on the assignment, something that demonstrated they had found a way to make it compelling for themselves. I was very young and, sad to say, very conventional, so I often didn't recognize the intention underlying their approach. I believe my typical put-down (masquerading as educational critique) was a variation on "You are not treating this assignment seriously enough." But the quality of their energy soon forced me to admit that what they wrote displayed real interest in writing. It had "juice." Not surprisingly, some of them went on to become professional writers.
They say students teach the teacher more than the teacher teaches the students. I certainly grew from those experiences and learned the crucial importance of putting budding or blocked writers in touch with what they really want to write about, the ideas they care about, the artistic challenges they set for themselves without even knowing it. There's an excitement in pursuing this line of attack. They may end up losing sleep because of it, but it's sleep well-lost.
So this is my suggestion. Locate that place inside you where you are passionate, or at least curious, about your subject. Take the feelings of being overwhelmed or confused or incompetent to write as well as whoever your particular icon is and relegate them to the back of a closet you seldom use. Then focus on nothing but your subject and what you find fascinating in it. Trust that the more you do that, the more you will find yourself wanting to get up in the middle of the night or early in the morning to start writing. I'll meet you in spirit as we all write. It will be nice to know I'm not alone. Just be careful not to spill coffee on your keyboard or paper.
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