What’s Influencing Your Writing?

Ugh, I keep trying to start a sentence or write a whole one or two and keep erasing it. I imagine different people who might distract me, and then I get distracted cause I had to blow my nose.

Anyway, the pressures of work call me to perhaps be shorter today once again, as well as the stresses of the days before which have kept me from getting up early enough to write without being way more tired than I’d like. Who else can relate to me in knowing how it feels to be pressured by your job, by your need to make a (stable) living, and even by your social circumstances? When you’re an artist, you feel the pressure to keep your art purely for art and not turn it into  purely a means of making money. Yet you also sense the urgency from yourself and others to make a decent living. Starving artist stereotype.

Am I allowed to want to make money off of my art? Of course I am! Of course you are! I think it’s important to find others marching through the same waters as you to help you begin or continue in stride. Even then…

I personally am of a character that many would call “weak,” for I am easily influenced by others around me. It can be as simple as what I think of a movie, perhaps, or whether or not I should go to a party. It can be as profound as to consider how open I am to taking risks and going on adventures. Weighing the insights of other people to make your own judgment is not a bad thing, and neither is taking sound advice. But when that influence becomes an emotional one, it can lead to havoc.

Besides potentially creating a black hole in a segment of your life (which my God redeems beyond my comprehension) letting others influence you the wrong way can lead you to create works of art that are not true. They are not true to your moral standard, they are not what you believe to be true, and they communicate what others might say but you disagree with in your heart of hearts. It’s not the story you would write.

The best way I have found to combat this is…to use your mind. Cling to what you believe is right and do not stray from it. When you cling to the truth and hold on, (even to your own opinions no matter how wrong they are), your creative works can be free to sing.