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I started carrying around a notebook when I went out. I took it everywhere I went and put it on my nightstand when I slept. I bought a nice leather cover to keep it in and a fancy ink pen to write with. I felt very unique and hoped that people thought I was smart when they would see be scribbling in the book.

I’ve read that this is what writers do. They carry around notebooks, so they can always write when their muse whispers to them, so they are never without the means to record the words that appear in their minds. So I started carrying around a notebook, hoping a muse would sing to me and that letters would flash in my head, but it was never so easy for me. Words don’t appear in my head, I’ve got to force them in, I’ve got to struggle to remember vocabulary flash cards and lines of old poetry. My handwriting has always been atrocious, but it’s practically unreadable in my notebook since my hands shake when I try to write while standing or walking. The letters are all misshapen and because pages warp from the humid air, their all connected like cursive script because I don’t lift my pen off the page enough while writing.

After a month, I looked back at what I had written. It was all terrible. Dull descriptions of the grey carpet and off-white ceiling tiles of the building I work in. Poorly wrought poems about philosophers with preposterous rhymes. I was so ashamed of how awful it all was that I burnt the notebook (but I kept the leather cover and pen, those cost me money, why shouldn’t I keep them?)

Perhaps I’m not a writer. Perhaps I can carry around a paintbrush, but I’ll never be a painter. I wish I was a writer. I wish I was creative and capable of conjuring beauty.
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>>24743911
You're supposed to make shitty observations so you get in the habit of making them at all, which is what's required to get better at them.
If you pair this with practice actually writing, your writing will improve. Especially if you spend time reading things with prose, verse, on themes you enjoy and want to incorporate into your writing. Reread, read more closely, and try to figure out why the author included what they did in the way they did.
As for handwriting? Unless you have some sort of disease, practice while concentrating on making it legible (probably with cursive worksheets) will take only a few hours of investment to get "good enough."
You may never get good enough, by your standards. But you will get better.
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>>24743911
This better not be copypasta, OP.
That said, saying that you aren't cut out to be a writer after a month is like saying you aren't cut out to get fit because you can't lift like an Olympian on day 1 of your routine.
Don't fall for the scam that writers are born, I've seen more than enough "natually talented" people just turn out to have been passionate enough to push through the years of tedious improvement needed to hone their craft. And I've seen many more people throw away their passion after getting corrupted by "I'm not cut out for this" rather than thinking, "I need to get better at this.".
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>>24743944
Well of course I’ve been writing for more than a month, I meant that I’ve only been doing this notebook exercise for a month.

And I feel like I like the senses of a notebook writer. My eyes fail to find beautiful flowers to write about and my nose struggles to smell their polleny scent.
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Why can't you just use the notes app on your phone?
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>>24743952
Because I hate thumb typing, it hurts after a while.
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>>24743911
I don't know, OP. I think you are off to a good start and appreciate your, ostensible, honesty.
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>>24743952
what kind of faggot wants to tap their ideas onto a shitty glass display with their thumbs
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>>24743980
I got a keyboard for mine, any bluetooth keyboard can be used :]
Makes it easier to transfer if you ever go to print.
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>>24743981
You can walk and type on your Bluetooth keyboard?
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>>24743985
No, walking and typing is how my mother died so I don't do that.
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>>24743986
I thought she died choking on dick?
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>>24743988
Bot has confused my mother who walked into traffic with his mother who had insatiable hunger for, presumably, chicken.
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>>24743994
pudding*
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>>24743997
Richard*
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>>24743947
Then don't write about flowers. If you're able to sense beauty, focus on wherever you find it at first. If you have trouble communicating that beauty, digest and dissect the prose of others until you've gotten a deep enough pool of terms and terminology to put thoughts to paper. Maybe flowers are something to return to later.
Are stars beautiful? Old houses? The wet symphony that plays on rainy days, dulled and warmed by the walls that separate you from the world? How about lizards?
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>>24744001
My mistake. RIP your mother and may god have mercy on Dick's conscience.
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you're not a writer because you get paid for it or get massive recognition.

you're a writer because you write, plain and simple.

think your writing is bad? good, that means you can make it better.

don't write for the outcome—write for the process. it's a beautiful thing honing the craft. it's beautiful to read things you haven't read before and commit the ideas and words into memory.

if you're not absolutely dead set on it, don't even try to start.

read Bukowski's "so you want to be a writer" poem. he says it better than I can.



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