Just Do It

There are probably a billion different cliches that are running through my head right now, all about beginning anew and restarting and writing and...well, you get the point. The one that finally won me over was the titular Just Do It but not the Nike ad. I'm talking about the first and most important piece of advice that Stephen King gave in his book "On Writing". Everything else is wonderful and useful advice but if I only read that first line, I would be ahead already.

I read the book, at first by skimming it in a book store(one of several that I know are gone because the mall they used to be in is now a giant, creepy abandoned building) and then by checking it out alongside Danse Macabre. To be honest, I forgot I had it and ended up returning it unread! I was recently wandering the web aimlessly, as I'm wont to do when I stumbled upon a quick summary of King's rules of writing, summed up for bloggers. The first one hit me like a punch.

Just do it.

That's it. Don't sit around and wait. Ideas are like food, wonderful when fresh, still acceptable even when warmed over once or twice but if you hold onto them too long, they start to rot and that rotten brain-stuff rolls over and starts to infect the rest of your head. How much happier and well-adjusted would I be if I had tossed all this junk floating around onto a page in some corner of the internet? What have I missed because the fridge of my mind is full to the brim with plastic containers full of mysterious, congealed lumps?

I think the last time I wrote on the internet was sometimes in 2009, on myspace. It was one of those "Well, I've got nothing to say but I'll use a lot of words to say it" blogs. Since then, I've breezed through a couple English classes where, despite the teacher complimenting my writing, I always felt like I was pulling my punches. I don't think I've gotten to my full potential and I don't think I will unless I start emptying my mental pantry. So, I guess that's my mission statement: get the junk out! Whatever I think or feel is going to get dumped on this page in a regular fashion. That means sometimes, there will be complete non sequiturs: video game progress updates, rpg/boardgame actual plays, philosophical wheel spinning, literature or comic critique and a bunch of other stuff pinballing around the ol' noggin. There's no telling what because I'm living with a simple goal.

Just do it.