what I learned while watching the ocean

Part of it was speaking aloud to my husband, one of the few who has to listen to my ramblings. We were at Ocean Beach in San Francisco only yesterday but it feels like longer. We walked along the beach, then stood for a while along the wall, steps up from the sand. We'd been talking about my work, the writing, and what it meant to me, what it means now as compared to last year or when I started.

What I found was how secure I've become in what I do, and that's all from how much writing I've done. And if someone was going to ask me if they wanted to write what they should do, I would tell them to write.

Then write, and write some more.

I read somewhere that someone said Stephen King said if you want to write, you should write a million words to get started. Or something like that; I did just Google it, but came up empty-handed. But no matter, for I'll chalk it up to Mr. King, and completley agree. If you want to be a writer, then start writing.

There are a few reasons, but the biggest two are this; first, you get a feel for writing, get out a lot of the bad writing. Experience, plain and simple. The more you do of something, the better you get at it.

The second is developing one's voice. I really believe the only way to do that is to write. Developing a voice is different than becoming a better writer, because one is about craft and competency, the other is HOW that craft is employed.

What genre(s) one will explore and how to do it is voice, the method and verbiage. But only by writing can that be explored, realized. The more writing, the better.

Whether it's novels or short stories, but it's the writing, the quantity, because it takes a certain amount of work under the belt to get a feeling for this application.

Now, there are ALWAYS exceptions, always. However I know the more writing I do, the more able I feel, and looking back at what I've done, there's the proof. That's easy to check.

And it's nice, in a way, very pleasant to see growth, advancement. Means something is getting better, makes me feel like what I'm doing means something. I've learned all this over the last eight and a half months of just getting that butt in the chair and writing. That's what this year has been about and watching the beach I put it into words, noting the ocean going back and forth. That never ends.

Back and forth go the words, like the water. They never end. Right now they're going through me, through all the living writers on this planet in so many languages. Published or no, the stories live in the words we write. We translate the essence, and of course, we'd like to do it the best we can.

Get our ideas expunged and the more succinct we are, the more people want to read it. Because getting stories out is easier than ever. Publishing via the big boys will always be a needle in a haystack, but with self-publishing, e-books, we can offer our stories in so many formats, so easily slipped onto any iTouch or e-reader with a few clicks of a mouse.

That's all new, but is here to stay.

So write. Write a lot. Write about what you like, what you feel compelled to say. Write then write some more, saving often. Please save for you'd hate to lose what took so much time, energy and sweat to create. Then write it again, revisions and editing a part of the game. Then write some more. Something new, something revised, whatever keeps the juices flowing. New is good, but don't let something old languish if it needs a lift.

The oceans won't end in my lifetime, neither will the words.