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Tyson’s Thoughts: Writing about writing?

Sometimes writing can be like pulling teeth.
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Instead of discussing things that are going on around the North Island this week, or talking about current events that are happening at this very moment in time, I thought I’d write about writing.

Write about writing?

That sentence might sound redundant, but hopefully this editorial comes off as anything but redundant (yes, I do realize I’m being redundant by overusing the word redundant. I’m failing miserably at being ironical here).

So what exactly do I have to say about writing?

Allow me to digress on this subject, and if I end up boring you, feel free to skip to the end where I sum everything up in a neat and concise sentence.

Here goes nothing.

Sometimes writing can be like pulling teeth; painful, irritating, and downright frustrating to do.

Other times the words flow so easily from my brain to my fingertips to the keyboard that everything comes out in a perfect narrative structure in no time flat.

The juxtaposition of these two points is something I like to call “the gift and the curse”.

I feel gifted because I know I’m good at writing, yet I feel cursed because I’m never 100 per cent satisfied with my work.

Why do I do it then?

I’ve asked myself this question many times, and I always come back with the same answer.

I enjoy the never-ending pursuit of trying to create something “perfect”.

Perfection is obviously unattainable, but that won’t stop me from trying to reach it, because there is no better feeling than coming up with a well written sentence that turns into an engrossing paragraph that becomes a fully fleshed out story that people want to read and talk about.

It makes all the moments of self-doubt, indecision, and aggravation, worth it in the end.

It’s like a high, and I used to get that exact same kind of high from playing sports.

When I was a young man in my 20s, there was nothing I enjoyed more than making a great play and scoring points for my team.

It was always about that one moment in time where I pulled off exactly what I wanted to do, and then enjoying the satisfaction from all the hard work that went into achieving it.

Nowadays I’d rather write about people making plays and scoring points, because I want to capture that moment in time for them as perfectly as I can so they will always remember it.

So how do I feel about writing?

To sum it up; you have to hate it and you have to love that you hate it, because you hate that you love hating it.

Make sense? I hope so.

Thanks for reading, check out www.northislandgazette.com every Thursday for brand new Tyson’s Thoughts.



Tyson Whitney

About the Author: Tyson Whitney

I have been working in the community newspaper business for nearly a decade, all of those years with Black Press Media.
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