“blue tracks” by devi laskar
No one ever asks another person, ‘So why did you take a shower today?’ or ‘Why is it necessary for you to have lunch?’ The red flags are raised, so to speak, when the tasks of bathing and eating are not completed regularly, when there is an absence of action.
But with writing, it’s different. With any of the arts, it’s different. Usually, no one is going around asking you why you haven’t written your pages, why you haven’t completed your painting or sculpture. It’s up to you. The responsibility is all yours.
In his book The War of Art, author Steven Pressfield discusses resistance and its many forms; and how the paths of resistance for the writer are constantly popping up. It is easier not to write. It is easier to procrastinate. It is easier to like the idea of writing but not to practice it with consistency.
Authors Anne Lamott and Natalie Goldberg, to name two, also have books out that detail step-by-step methods to combat resistance and helpful exercises to keep writing, keep moving forward. Lamott’s Bird by Bird is one of my favorite books of all time, as are Goldberg’s Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life and Writing Down the Bones.
But the one thread that runs through everyone’s advice is ownership. Writers write because they are bursting to write. They cannot not write. It is their calling, and their passion, and their desire to communicate their thoughts and feelings.
This means taking ownership. Write the book you are dying to read. Write because you must write. One word, one sentence, one hour, one day at a time. You make time to bathe and eat, so make time for yourself to write. It’s that essential, it’s that necessary. Start today!
And let us, your friends and colleagues in the Book Writing World, know how you are progressing. Post in the Book Writing World’s community center, ask questions of others. We are here to support you and cheer you on, we are here to answer each other’s questions help you make that final push toward the completion of a poem or a short story or a book-length manuscript.
Join us.
Devi, thank you for this great post! I think you’re right that taking that right of ownership, the doing of one’s true work, is the starting point. We have the right but we also have to claim it, every day.
It’s funny that you mention Lamott and Goldberg. Goldberg made such a difference to me when I was first starting to write, and recently I decided to go back and read her again. I started with a later book, Thunder and Lightning: Cracking Open the Writer’s Craft (terrific), and I’m going to go back to those first two that you mention, too. And I’m reading Lamott’s Bird by Bird now. They both speak to beginner’s mind, and to the centrality of process (rather than end product). And to ownership. Which for whatever reason I seem to need to hear over and over again.