every other day November 1, 2009

Yesterday was a good writing day. It was good because I worked on Self Help Addicts for the first time since the beginning of August. It’s been sitting here on this computer, the books and unedited pages on this table waiting for me to get back to it. Packing, moving, looking for a house, doing everything in record time, packing again and now waiting to close have all been really good excuses for not working on it. When I have written it’s usually been here, an observation or realization about whatever’s going on.

So it was great yesterday when I sat down with a couple of pages and started to edit them. It came easily, the changes and additions seemed obvious.  This morning is different. I’ve been dreading working on it since I first opened my eyes. I’ve been up an hour now and I still haven’t read a sentence.  There’s this tiny — no, wait who am I kidding — there’s this huge, booming voice that always shouts at me saying “Why bother? Nothing will ever come of it. It’s never going to be good enough. Sleep in. Watch TV. Do anything other than write.” Or meditate, or apply for a job, or submit my work.

I’ve read a dozen self help books that talk about this voice. I’m sure you have too.  Most of the SHBs say half the battle is noticing when it speaks up, and the other half is knowing that you don’t have to believe it.  So since I can’t get rid of it, I have to engage it, face it head on, say “hello old friend” then sit down and write.

Morning Person August 14, 2009

Why am I not writing? Well obviously I’m writing; I’m writing this. But why am I not writing the self help addicts book? I haven’t been working on it lately; the work i’s sporadic and I can’t for the life of me seem to post the reviews of the three books I’ve chosen for the sample chapter. I don’t know why. Well… maybe I do. Fear is probably in the mix. Writing then taking it apart and re-writing. Again and again. The idea of it is daunting, but I don’t want to get this far and then put it down again, and wait another two years to work on it, again.

About six months ago I started to get up at 5:30 to write a novel because I read Walter Mosley’s book, This Year You Write Your Novel. Have you ever read a book that made something seem imminently doable? This is the book. I’ve read writing books before, most of them self help books, but this one was so slim, so direct, that each sentence seemed undeniable. Write every day. Every Day. At least an hour and a half.

When I read that I knew that the only way I could do it was to get up at 5:30am, get some coffee and set a timer for 90 minutes. And that’s what I did. At first it seemed incredibly early, I had to drag myself out of bed. But then the coffee would taste good, and I would write something, the shitty first draft stuff, just basically venting about whatever, but giving people different names and changing their hair color.  I got up every morning without fail and wrote.

A couple of months ago the writing changed so I could finish up the self help addicts book that I had abandoned for two years, but I figured the same rules applied: get up every morning and write.  Now, I’ve let the writing go.

But I still get up early, my eyes still open at about 5:20 in anticipation of starting a new day, even when my mind just wants to hunker down and stay in bed for whatever reason it can think of. Then I make promises to myself. Well I’ll get up now, but I have to meditate and practice yoga or I have to write a post for the blog. This morning I stayed in bed but I clearly wanted to write because I grabbed my journal, leaning on my left, using my arm as a pillow and writing parts of what you just read, writing like I did for years without editing, just the shitty first drafts.