Sugar-coated, second-guessing.

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 “Don’t fake it. Don’t write what you think people want to hear. Don’t sugar-coat it or second-guess. Just be yourself. Then, once you know who you are and what you need (not want, but NEED) to say, keep doing it.”

A friend of mine once shared these invaluable morsels of truth, and it is precisely such insights, which have been a guiding force for me in the experimentation of sentences I have duly named, ‘The Sheona Experiment’.

As I dip my little toes into more and more writing opportunities, I have found myself getting horribly tied up in thinking too hard, about what I feel readers want to hear – cue the infamous ‘writer’s block’.

It is literally like Dr. Evil has tapped into my brain, making it virtually impossible to muster up anything remotely witty, “interesting” or “relevant” to my readership. If however, anyone is actually interested in reading about the Monash Celtic Band, I would be happy to oblige, and start reporting live from rehearsals.

Because honestly, in my mind, what I think YOU want to read, is not what I want to write about.

At this point, I close down my mac, look into the Melbourne sun which is still undecided whether to shine or not (typical), and decide to start, stop thinking so hard about it.

Minutes later, it begins. And before I know it, my hands are working at a speed that cannot keep up with my thoughts, and soon my Word document is filled with a miraculously unstructured piece, which I would really, really like to share. I can’t “fake it, sugar-coat it or second-guess”. I know what I need to say, and those are the sounds you hear. They are not edited, censored or even digitally re-mastered.

Literally direct from the paddock to the plate: straight from the mystical land of my upstairs loft, where I use my pillow as a desk on my lap, and seek to bake up a beautiful mess of consonants and vowels thrown around in a manner so bizarre, that they make sense.

Well at least I hope they make sense.

It is an experiment after all. It all is, so tell me: how are you going to “just be yourself”?

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