Writing: 884 words
It's about damn time.
127 days have come and gone since I last managed to commit any words to this project of mine. In the last four months, I've gotten exceedingly talented at finding just about anything to do other than sitting down and writing. If I'd stuck to the thousand-word-a-day rule, I would have finished The Danger of Being Me as well as whatever book I decided to write next by now.
Que será. There's nothing to be done about that lost time now. Nothing to be done about the thirteen years I've lost since I started this everloving project. To be fair, only 4,711 of those days were actually wasted; I have, after all, managed to get about 77,000 words down on the page. That shakes out to roughly sixteen words per day.
I couldn't say exactly what it was that got the engine running again. Like so much of my byzantine psychology, it was almost certainly the combination of an uncountable number of variables that came together in just the right way at just the right moment. One of them, I think, is that I started reading Bernard Schaffer's Sherlock Holmes novel Whitechapel. I didn't know B.J. personally, but my wife and I knew his sister in high school, so reading his book still has that thrill of seeing a friend make the Big Time.
Another part of it may be an interview that Schaffer gave in which he cited Stephen King's On Writing as one of his favorite books. I read King's autobiographical writing guide back in February of `2002, and I recall it being one of my own personal favorites. It certainly inspired me to increase my reading, even if I did fail to get down to the business of writing in the long term. And though I haven't held to it, King's thousand-word-a-day rule certainly burrowed its way into my mind. I regularly lament my inability to live up to it.
But Schaffer also recounted the lengths to which writers like King and Ellison and Leonard went in order to practice their craft, and the obstacles they overcame in the pursuit of their passion. And perhaps that was the most influential variable in the incomprehensible equation of my motivation. If King could find make himself write in the washroom of his trailer and Ellison could make himself write in a bathroom stall of his boot-camp barracks, then I can damn well make myself write in the comfort of my own living room loveseat.
Of course, maybe that's part of the problem. I don't necessarily like the idea that the best writing comes from hardship, but maybe there's some truth to it after all. I'm not living the life of luxury by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm living a comfortable life, and perhaps I've grown complacent in my comfort. Writing is very much an act of blazing restlessness, and nothing smothers that fire like contentment.
So I wrote 884 words tonight. Some of them were good. Most of them probably weren't. It wasn't a lot - it wasn't even that sacred thousand - but they were words, and they served to complete another section of the Backstory. I've got one more section to go, and then a short bridge to the Frontstory, and the Backstory will be finished. So no more diversions; it's a matter of doing. Writing is an art, but it's also a job, and every job requires work.
I'm going to put in the work and get this book done. King did it. Ellison did it. Leonard did it. Schaffer did it. Because it's about time I stopped screwing around and finished my damn book.
127 days have come and gone since I last managed to commit any words to this project of mine. In the last four months, I've gotten exceedingly talented at finding just about anything to do other than sitting down and writing. If I'd stuck to the thousand-word-a-day rule, I would have finished The Danger of Being Me as well as whatever book I decided to write next by now.
Que será. There's nothing to be done about that lost time now. Nothing to be done about the thirteen years I've lost since I started this everloving project. To be fair, only 4,711 of those days were actually wasted; I have, after all, managed to get about 77,000 words down on the page. That shakes out to roughly sixteen words per day.
I couldn't say exactly what it was that got the engine running again. Like so much of my byzantine psychology, it was almost certainly the combination of an uncountable number of variables that came together in just the right way at just the right moment. One of them, I think, is that I started reading Bernard Schaffer's Sherlock Holmes novel Whitechapel. I didn't know B.J. personally, but my wife and I knew his sister in high school, so reading his book still has that thrill of seeing a friend make the Big Time.
Another part of it may be an interview that Schaffer gave in which he cited Stephen King's On Writing as one of his favorite books. I read King's autobiographical writing guide back in February of `2002, and I recall it being one of my own personal favorites. It certainly inspired me to increase my reading, even if I did fail to get down to the business of writing in the long term. And though I haven't held to it, King's thousand-word-a-day rule certainly burrowed its way into my mind. I regularly lament my inability to live up to it.
But Schaffer also recounted the lengths to which writers like King and Ellison and Leonard went in order to practice their craft, and the obstacles they overcame in the pursuit of their passion. And perhaps that was the most influential variable in the incomprehensible equation of my motivation. If King could find make himself write in the washroom of his trailer and Ellison could make himself write in a bathroom stall of his boot-camp barracks, then I can damn well make myself write in the comfort of my own living room loveseat.
Of course, maybe that's part of the problem. I don't necessarily like the idea that the best writing comes from hardship, but maybe there's some truth to it after all. I'm not living the life of luxury by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm living a comfortable life, and perhaps I've grown complacent in my comfort. Writing is very much an act of blazing restlessness, and nothing smothers that fire like contentment.
So I wrote 884 words tonight. Some of them were good. Most of them probably weren't. It wasn't a lot - it wasn't even that sacred thousand - but they were words, and they served to complete another section of the Backstory. I've got one more section to go, and then a short bridge to the Frontstory, and the Backstory will be finished. So no more diversions; it's a matter of doing. Writing is an art, but it's also a job, and every job requires work.
I'm going to put in the work and get this book done. King did it. Ellison did it. Leonard did it. Schaffer did it. Because it's about time I stopped screwing around and finished my damn book.