This Is How You Follow Your Curiosity In Your Writing.
Art For Art’s Sake: Vol 2 Part 14
I have learnt (the hard way) that following my curiosity is good for my writing’s health.
But what do you mean by “follow your curiosity”?
According to Google, curiosity is
- a strong desire to know or learn something.
- an unusual or interesting object or fact.
So “follow your curiosity” means you go after the unusual or interesting subject that has given you a strong desire to know more about it.
And how do you do that? By adopting these three mindsets -
Follow That What Interests You.
Anything that grabs your attention for more than two seconds is worth a few more. And it could be something that excites you or even irritates you.
If you want to avoid writing generic stuff, which sounds the same as every other article or book out there, write what interests you.
Follow Where It Takes You.
Once you choose to follow your curiosity, don’t restrict your writing flow by judging and correcting what you’re writing.
As author Jodi Picoult said, “You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.” So let yourself write first, for yourself and your eyes only. Later you can edit and make sense of it.
Behave Like A Scientist.
This means you don’t take yourself or your writing too seriously or personally.
Like a scientist doing their research, you are trying things out by following your curiosity. You write one short story, send it out to the public, get feedback (even no feedback is feedback), you change a few variables in your next short story and try again. Over time you gather data on what’s working in your writing for you as well as for the readers and form your unique writing style.
A failed short story, book, novel, or essay doesn’t mean you, as a writer, are a failure. It simply means there’s more to learn and figure out.
Writing is nothing but experimenting with words and your imagination.
