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Ring Psychology

by Aaron Hall

Volume Seven: Play it again, Sam Writing, like any other artistic or creative undertaking, is far from an exact science. I in no way believe myself to be a master of the game or a voice of authority on the dos and don’ts of writing. This column is simply me sharing with all of you some of the things that I’ve picked up along the way that seem to help me out. Use them, abuse them, make fun of them, or sell them on eBay. Now, on to the article! “Play it Again, Sam” It’s time to pull the curtain back a bit and talk about something that I generally don’t talk about too often; the writing of these journalistic entries. Generally I like to talk about creative writing and comic writing in particular, but this time around we’re gonna focus on writing for either journalism or some other practical reasons, like book reports and such. Now, this stuff can also be applied to creative writing, but we’ll look into that here in a few minutes. The basic lesson is as follows: write it twice. Do it again. Rinse and repeat. However you want to say it, the fact is, you should never just write an article, you should never just do one of multiple homework assignments. Getting started is often times the hardest part of doing anything in life. Sitting down at the desk, booting up the word processor, and spending the time to actually write or do some work. I know that for me it is pretty much the biggest obstacle. So once you finally get yourself sitting down at the computer or writing table, why stop after only writing one thing? Why put together one article or one page or half your homework assignment and then quit? Writing is very much a downhill process. The only uphill of it comes from starting. Once you do that, it’s easy to just keep rolling. The same can be said for anything that I’ve mentioned, be it comic script writing, doing homework assignments, or writing an article such as this one. Now at this point you may be saying to yourself, “Well Aaron, that’s great and all, but I’m not a writer and I’m already out of school, so this doesn’t apply to me.” And the fact it, you may be right. This article was more for journalism writers such as myself that in addition to working on multiple creative projects also work on articles such as these. By writing two articles at a time you allow yourself to get ahead of schedule, thus giving you more flexibility and much less pressure, which is a good thing. The fact is, this wasn’t my longest or even my most insightful article. Wanna know why? Because it’s Saturday night at 7 p.m. and I should’ve had this written and turned into to Stumblebum central well over 24 hours ago. So, wanna know what I’m going to do when I finish this article? That’s right, I’m going to take my own advice and go write another one, thus getting myself one week ahead of schedule and giving myself more flexibility and less pressure, which as I said, is always a good thing. And if you’re not a writer or an individual that deals with deadlines or time crunches ever, then perhaps you could just use this advice and go start your Christmas shopping early. Or if you don’t observe Christmas you can at least start prepping whatever holiday rituals you do observe early. Or if you don’t celebrate anything during the holidays I guess you could start getting ready to … not celebrate early. Or I could just stop writing and end the article now… yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Until next time, this is Michael Jackson trial juror # 7 and the title character from R. Kelly’s five part urban song “Trapped in the Closet”, Aaron Hall, signing off. If you have any questions or comments about creating comics feel free to email them to freejenkins@gmail.com and I’ll answer them right here in this very column because yes, I care about you that much.