Writing is a journey and a difficult one at that. It is often a struggle to write, and it is often a treacherous trek to establish the habit of writing consistently. The rewards are amazing and tangible: if we do it, we end up with good work, tangible pages that can go toward completing a story, short or long, nonfiction or fiction.
Training ourselves to write every day and to think about our writing every day comes with…practice. We just have to slog past the days when the doubts come along like Sirens, and sing songs in our heads, nagging, whining songs that make our task of writing every day, for even a few minutes, an insurmountable task.
For a long while, I’d been writing 750 words each day – I had joined 750words.com and I was merrily marching along, working on both fiction as well as a nonfiction pieces. Then, the dark heart of summer fell upon me and that was it for this harried mom of three: Not only was I not writing 750 words a day, I was not writing even 10 percent of that. I was limiting my writing to to-do lists and checks. Although I blame the summer months and the lack of school, nothing much has changed since my children’s schooling resumed and their after-school activities are back in full throttle.
Once we fall out of our habits, they are hard to acquire again. And I’ve been listening to that voice, we know that voice, it’s the one saying “put it off until tomorrow, because there’s too much to do today.” That voice is correct: I do have too much to do today, and I’m neither as organized nor as efficient as I’d like to be, as I once was. But the voice, as melodious and sympathetic as it is, is also dead wrong.
The lesson I finally learned this afternoon was that if I don’t take the time to work, for myself, to practice my craft, then no one is going to do it for me. I can’t just acquire a “personal writer” like other people acquire personal trainers. No one is going to finish my book for me. No one is going to finish this blog for me. I have to do it, and I have to stop listening to the voice telling me to wait.
In the Book Writing World, our fearless Elizabeth Stark talks about the Storyteller, the Brain and the Athlete and how we need all three components to get to the finish line and cross that line with our finished books. Well, I added a fourth today – the Personal Shopper. I completed one of my goals this week: I went out and bought a brand-new notebook, and a great purple pen. And after I’m done with this blog, I’m off to read a poem by my teacher, the late great Lucille Clifton, (her work and some precious artifacts are on exhibit at Emory U. in Atlanta right now) and write one of my own.
It will not be a 750-word poem, but it will be a start.