I’m a busy person. Most of us are. We have lives (ok most of us have lives). A lot of my friends seem very mystified by the whole process of writing a book in the first place. Making tea, they get. Including chocolate dougnuts with tea they get even better.
But not writing.
The funny thing is that for most writers, we’ll do anything but write. (Witness the rage in blogging, which doesn’t actually count toward the word count of your book going up.) We’ll do housework, we’ll do bills, we’ll even do taxes rather than plunk our butts in a chair and actually write.
Why?
The reasons are as different and individual as the writer. For me, it’s a matter of not wanting to get interrupted. Well, partially.
Once I ‘m in the story, I don’t want someone yanking me back out. It’s like going to a movie and then having your kids tell you 2/3 of the way into the movie they’ve gotta go pee. You know you’re going to miss something big by leaving.
The same thing happens when I write. My brian is just getting rolling, the movie of my book is playing in my head and I’m writing it down as fast as I can to keep up. Then, BAM!
Everything grinds to a hault because she hit me, he won’t stop bugging me, the cat ate my bird and dinner’s burning on the stove. Getting back into the frenzied heart-pumping action of a fight scene or the sensual buzz of a love scene is a lot harder when you’ve got to get into it again.
The other thing I guess that keeps me away is the fear of failure. Down deep I tell myself that If I finish this book, then I have to send it in. If they don’t take it (which, judging by the thickness I’ve developed in my rejection file is more often than not) then I’ve wasted those months and years of my life I spent writing it.
Which isn’t true! Once a story is on the page, it is forever out of my head and available to share. It has power to speak to people and change ideas. If it remains stuck in the recesses of my mind, it ends when I do.
*sigh*
OK, enough pep talk. Now I’ve got to get back to work!
This entry was posted
on Friday, February 23rd, 2007 at 2:49 pm
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