One of Those Days

Yeah . . . I mean THOSE days.

It doesn't matter what predicated it, but I had one of THOSE days. I've had insomnia for a few days. I'm tried (in the extreme), in pain most of the time, crabby, there's too much housework. And did I mention my ceiling is ripped out in my kitchen? Oh, yes, those Demon Baby floods have finally taken their toll. There is dust everywhere, even in my coffee pot, and in the midst of this, my new editor requested some changes, and I realized he works very differently from my last editor. Not worse . . . or better . . . just different. And as a writer, I must adapt. Did I mention no sleep?

And so I wondered. Why the HELL did I want to be a writer anyway?

Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . you're sort of born a writer. You can't give it up. It's in your blood. Blah, blah, blah. But am I having fun?

Um, yesterday? No.

Today? Not so much.

But I am reminded of a great quote by Shaw:

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them.
- George Bernard Shaw

Oldest Daughter came into my room last night. I was distraught. And she said, "Why don't you conisder all this stress a positive and see what you learn about yourself and being a better writer out of it."

Well . . . damn her. You would think she was raised by some Buddha-spouting mother or something. Go figure.

So today . . . I am having one of THOSE days. You know the ones. The type where I LEARN something about who I am.

How about you? What kind of day are YOU going to have?

Trickery

When I gave birth to my second child, I was working in publishing and explaining everything that needed to be done on my books as I was walking out the door ready to go push out a nine-pound-something baby. I was a perfectionist then . . . I'm still that way now.

I've never crammed for an exam. Never wrote a term paper the night before. When I get deadlines, I dutifully write them down in my Daytimer. My desk LOOKS chaotic. Indeed, is chaotic. My schedule is insane. But still in the midst of it, I make it work.

Some of it is trickery. Fooling my internal self. I can't do x or y until I finish this chapter. I bargain with myself. "No reading the NY Times online until you fill out the author quetionnaire from your publisher."

I see writers with those little bar graphs showing word counts. That wouldn't work for me, I don't think. But you never know.

Heck, even the write a novel in a month challenge is a bit of trickery to simply get a book DONE. As a writer, you work for yourself. If there's a motivation problem, a boss isn't going to give you a pep talk, nor is he or she going to tell you your job's on the line. You've got to figure it out yourself.

I write lists just so I can check things off. More trickery.

So how do YOU motivate yourself as a writer? What trickery is involved?

A Tale of Coffee and Writing

I would venture to say there isn't a writer under the sun who doesn't approach writing like I do coffee.

Ah, me and coffee. Sometimes, I greedily suck down a POT of coffee when I am under deadline.

I can stand in line in Starbucks and just revel in the aroma. I can smell it brewing in my kitchen all the way up in my bedroom. I love the SOUND of coffee brewing. Simply put, I love coffee.

Then I try to kick the habit. In fact, I met my acupuncturist while trying to kick the habit. For six months or so, I went to him and had needles poked into me all over my body. Some were for stress and high blood pressure, some for this or that, digestive health, energy. But a few were to help me through caffeine withdrawals.

OLDEST DAUGHTER (hello, honey . . . see . . . you made the blog today!) said to me, "Mom . . . you can't give up coffee anymore than you can stop being weird [a digression, I was DEVASTATED to learn all my children do NOT think I am like Carol Brady and instead say I am an impossibly eccentric mom, which I guess I knew, but I was trying SO hard to be Carol Brady-esque]. It's who you are. Drink coffee. You can't give it up."

So I went crawling back . . . like a jilted lover, I begged coffee to just take me into its arms again. And there I still am to this day.

Sort of like writing.

Which brings me to motivation. Why do you write? A regular here has been struggling with motivation. And there's not ONE of us who doesn't know what that's like. But give it up?

I think not.

Look . . . sometimes the odds seem daunting. Sometimes reviewers are cruel. Sometimes your manuscript has a serious case of the mehs. Sometimes it seems like you are just banging your head against the proverbial wall.

But face it. You can't give it up. And if you COULD then you were never really a writer to begin with. Yes. You heard me.

So get over it. Go brew a pot of friggin' Joe and write.

Thoughts?

Saturday Morning Kick in the Ass

Get your book done.

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.
~Pablo Picasso

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.
~Aristotle

The best way out is always through.
~Robert Frost

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose--a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
~Mary Shelley


THERE. Consider your ass kicked. Now go and write.

Happy Saturday, everyone.

Where are you in your work in progress?

Why Write?

The discussion yesterday of what writers are worth begs another question after seeing the responses and comments. Why write?

I have to be REALLY honest here (aren't I always?). I write to earn a living. Yes, I can be completely lofty and craft-driven. It can be my passion. I would write even if I didn't publish, but it would be in a different form, I think. I might blog about my kids, or about life, or about philosophy, or physics, or the universe. I might blog about God or gardening or knitting or my prayer and spiritual life. I would always write because it's who I am.

But I write, very specifically, to earn a living. I don't write to be known or have my book on a cover. The fact that it is on a cover earns me money. I write because I am not particularly qualified to do anything else. I can run a small newspaper, I can write for magazines, I can be a ghostwriter or book editor, but I can't usually get to the office on time, and I don't particularly like having a boss. I don't want someone to tell me what time I get to eat lunch. I don't like the way an office full of people can come to near-blows over issues pertaining to making the coffee or how to label personal items in the fridge. I don't want Big Brother reading my email or looking at what sites I visit. If I feel like wasting time, I want that perogative. Because given my work ethic, if I waste time now, trust me, I'll be working hours and hours unseen and still doing the work of two or three people because, as Demon Baby says, "That's how I roll, Baby." (He also is fond of, as we walk out the door now, saying, "Let's rock and roll, Mama." I am doomed. The kid is eccentric.)

But in the end, I write to make a living. So that entails writing things that are publishable. Watching the market, watching trends, thinking and plotting career strategies. And lots of writing.

I meet people all the time who are "thinking about" writing a book. I can meet them ten years later and they will STILL be "thinking about" it. I meet people whose books are so far from marketable that I don't quite know what to say. There's writing for friends and family and yourself, and there's writing to sell. They are two different animals. There's thinking about it, and doing it.

So when I think about what my time is worth, what I am worth as a writer, it is predicated on my being absolutely CRYSTAL clear about why I write. I really and totally do not write because I would just die without it. It's not how I breathe. It's important to me, it's part of me. But no, I write to earn a living. I would die without my children and without prayer, not without writing. I write because I like the lifestyle. I write because I don't particularly work and play well with others. I get frustrated by stupidity really fast, which pretty much precludes me working in most corporations. I write to earn a living and it's what I do, I think well. And that means I need to be razor sharp about what's selling, what's dead in the water, and how I spend my time.

This is what I do. And if I seem . . . steely-eyed about it, I am. Writing keeps a roof over my head, food on the table, and a violin in a case for Oldest Daughter. I don't have time to craft a novel no one will buy. I don't have time to "think about" it. I have to DO IT, every day, ass in this chair. FOCUS.

So why do you write?