Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Day 5 - Holidailies Epiphany #1

I’ve caught myself a couple of times saying, “Just a minute. I’m working on my Holidailies post.”

Or “I’ll be right there as soon as I’ve updated my blog.”

Yes, friends. It is that bad. Put the world on hold, I’m updating my blog.

And then I’ll catch myself several times a day, thinking -- What should I put up tomorrow? What can I say? Do I have a picture?

Just as I was about to note the end of myself as a useful person on earth, it occurred to me –

Why don’t I bring that same energy to my writing?

I’ll be right there as soon as I’ve finished this scene, these script pages, a plot reveal, some juicy dialog, Act 2, a line.

But I don’t. I let everything intrude. I wash clothes. I let the dogs out fifty times. I answer the phone. I look at the dust on the furniture. (Yeah, just look. Let’s not go crazy and do something wild like DUST the place. My career is too important to me.)

Several times, I’ve resolved to write first, everything else second, but what actually happens is I write between everything else.

The Holidailies challenge has shown me how little a bit of energy need be to make something important in a day.

So, here I go, to write first and make everything else wait.

Well, except the dogs. That’d just be silly.

2 comments:

  1. I understand the writing thing completely. When I have a writing deadline, my house is never cleaner, my laundry always folded, and all those things that I've put off for years suddenly get done. Everything except the thing I'm supposed to be writing.

    Interestingly, I've read from other writers that this is quite common and that somehow (this certainly works for me), what you are supposed to be writing gets percolated in your head and when you actually can't put it off any longer, it's amazing how much "writing" has gone on before you ever put anything in black and white.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I finally decided there was a certain amount of fiddling included in my writing process. I was happier after that. As long as I circled back to my desk, I considered it all writing.

    ReplyDelete

Glad to hear from you!