"Just Write"

That's my new mantra. When I'm feeling like I can't get anything done, or don't want to work on my project of the day: Just Write. If writing is what I'm doing to avoid writing, it might open things up enough to continue writing something that will pay me something.

Hopefully.

As good a place as any...

I'm a writer, or more accurately a photojournalist/editor, by trade. I take pictures, which I love, and I write stories, which I've come to loathe. I feel guilty for this loathing, and a little helpless to do much about it. Guilty because I have a job writing about motorcycles that most bikers would kill for. Guilty because my frittering away time on the Internet instead of writing is hurting my family.

I'm lazy by nature, and the twin misfortunes of the print magazine industry being in a permanent death spiral and the motorcycle industry in the shitter has really put a damper on my earning power. So I have to hustle, which I hate. Even worse, hustling means I have to complete stories, which seems to take me a week to do (if I'm lucky). And $300-700 a week doesn't quite cover living in LA.

Its silly, really. Most of these semi-yellow-journo pieces should take no more than a few hours tops, but I just.... don't.... care.... anymore. I have trouble getting excited over some douchebag's pride and joy. And even when I am excited, there's other things that grab my attention.

I'm hoping that writing down all of the other things that I'm thinking about will release the floodgates and make me a productive writer once more. I've noticed that in the past if I start writing its hard to stop me, so even though this is going to take some time, I'm hoping that it's an overall net gain.

It's freeing to write just for myself and not have to worry excessively about writing for an audience, or staying on topic, or any outside concerns at all. In fact, it comes pretty easily.

Just a warning, one of the stifling things about writing for me recently is that I'd rather be writing about one of the topics near and dear to me these days (like politics, or sex, or relationships, or topics taboo to the so-called motorcycle industry), so there's going to be no boundaries here, no holds barred, nothing withheld.

I'm pretty sure this will come back to bite me in the ass someday, but I'm pretty much beyond caring.