The Most Important Thing I Learned in 2012

Okay, a piece of advice: if you start a blog about writing and then you really ought to write on it, if only when something really cool happens in your writing life. If you don’t you’ll end up writing about it months later…like me.

In any case, something cool happened to me last year:

 You know my last post? No? Not important, it was just about a challenge I set myself…and then discarded the next day. But I had a good reason! Really I did, it’s called NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. If you’ve never heard of it before you really should go check it out. NaNoWriMo is a challenge to write 50,000 words of a novel in one month. It is held during November and is host to writers from all around the world.

I started late; I didn’t even find out about it until November 4^th, I signed up that day in some crazy, daring, fit. I don’t do things like this you see, I’m not that impulsive, not that brave. But on that Sunday afternoon I committed myself to writing more then I had ever written before. And I did it. 50,000 words, 26 days, 1 story, and me.

I learned that month that I can write, even when I don’t think I have anything to say. Too often I’ve waited until something really inspires to write; when that’s done I go find a book to read. Forget about the second chapter, I’ll get it another day. We all know how that ends. I haven’t done very much since November. That story’s not even finished, 50,000 words is a lot but it still only got me about half way through. I’m notoriously un-self motivated you see. I know that if I sit down and force myself to crank out some words I will be able to. They might even be worth reading.

Today I’m sitting down and writing a blog post, it’s not a real big thing, it’s not a novel for instance,  but it’s something. That’s all it takes I suppose, a little something every day. In November it was about 1650+ words a day. I don’t think I’ll be keeping that goal but I do know that I need to make a goal of some sort, now that I know that I can write I just have to make myself do it. 

But how much you write isn't as important as making yourself write. You see that's what I learned last year: I can write, but the catch is that I have to sit down and do it. There is no other way to become a writer, you have to write: Write when you feel like there is too much to say and you can't type fast enough. But too, Write when your tired, when you don't know what to say, when you don't think you can. It'll be hard sometimes, but in the end, it'll be worth it. 

Awfully Hard Work Doing Nothing

I've been procrastinating again so in interest of keeping my deadline I decided to recycle a relevant post from my first blog; From Yesterday's Tomorrow. In a way it grandfathered my earlier post on procrastination, though I had forgotten it at the time.

"Calvin: You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.
Hobbes: What mood is that?
Calvin: Last-minute panic." — Bill Watterson

"It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don't mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind. -Algernon" — Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays)

"If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done." — Rita Mae Brown

"Never postpone until tomorrow what you can postpone until the day after." — Raoul Wallenberg (Letters and Dispatches 1924-1944)

"As a writer, I need an enormous amount of time alone. Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It's a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write. Having anybody watching that or attempting to share it with me would be grisly."— Paul Rudnick

All quotes courtesy of goodreads.

Ten writerish things a procrastinating writer might do:

1. Make a list of things to write about

2. Read advise from other writers

3. Reorganize their book shelf, desk, or filing cabinet

4. Read a book, watch a movie, or start a marathon of their favorite TV show, and call it ‘gathering ideas’

5. Look for writer related pictures or quotes on Pinterest, Google, or in some other store for such things

6. Practice their signature for book signings and decide if they want a pen name

7. Shop for more office supplies and make a wish list for when they publish their book

8. Talk to their characters and do pretend interviews for their future fans, all out loud.  

9. Make a new slip cover for their notebook and wish they could afford a leather one

10. Draw flowers and tornados in their notebook’s margins while waiting for inspiration to strike

These ten things are not necessarily bad, in fact they can be very good things to do sometimes. BUT they will not help if you don’t remember a writer’s number one rule:

1. You can’t be a writer unless you write.