Just start writing, she told me.
Simple enough advice. Almost too simple. But it has never failed to work for me. The premise: Once you “just start writing,” you can get in the flow and chances are that thoughts and ideas will keep coming to you. Now, you can always go back and delete and/or change what you have written. But at least you have something down. As opposed to what you might have had had you not just started writing: nothing.
My mother gave me this sage advice many, many years ago. And there was some gravitas, some wisdom and experience behind this simple adage. She was a journalism major at a large Southern state university in the 1940s, and then went on to hold a job as “society editor” for a small, coastal Georgia resort town newspaper. Or course, anybody could give a person this advice. That’s the beauty of it. It’s whether or not one takes the advice and gives it a go.
I have “just started writing” many, many times in my life. As a student, I somehow remembered to do it, or at least to try doing it, and I always found that (surprise!) I had more than when I first sat down to write. As a teacher, I’ve also asked students to try it. They were actually too young to look at me and reply “Um, writer’s block?”
Of course, these days we may be talking about “just start typing,” but regardless of this writing/typing juxtaposition, it is still the same premise.
In life, it is not so simple, is it? Once we have done or said something, it has been said or done. That’s it. Finis. You can’t erase, delete, or even drag white-out over it. We didn’t necessarily stop and stare into space wondering why we said or did said action. It was done. But much like when writing an essay or paper for school, a speech for a presentation, or even a thank you note, we can continue. Though we cannot change what has occurred, we can move on. Give it the old “what’s done is done,” wipe your hands clean, and carry on.
So if you make a mistake or have a regret, don’t get life-block. Just start living again.
Which brings me back to the parallel of writing and living.
Parents know full well that life can be and is hard and unfair. They have that head-start in knowledge and wisdom over their young children. My mother would often times employ a quote she knew and loved in order to make a point with the goal of instilling character. Oh, she had no shortage of these sayings. Though it sometimes drove me crazy, I secretly admired then and willingly love now these sayings she would quote in hopes that I could and would move on from something bad or shameful I had done or felt about myself.
Where she got this one, I have no idea. But it’s a goodie, a selection from 12th-century Persian astronomer and philosopher Omar Khayyam and his book of poetic quatrains, The Rubaiyat.
“The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on. Nor all thy piety nor all thy wit, can cancel half a line of it” (Khayyam).
Credit:
Khyyam, Omar. The Rubaiyat. Bernard Quaritch, 1859.
