Write Every Day

Tragically, I have been up for two hours already, reading reading reading my own book. Really ready to read something else soon–almost anything else. And to write about something else, but being this close to sending off my final draft, I have book on the brain, and it’s hard to get past it to even blink through Facebook or the weather.

I have loved this project. It has been both charming and thrilling to chip away at these pages, and to work with the lovely and fabulous people of Kalos. I’m so grateful for their patience and kindness.

I’m not sure what clicked into place, but over the last two years I crept over from being someone who just sort of enjoyed writing bits and pieces here and there, as I had time, to being someone for whom writing is a matter of survival. When I try to imagine the most intolerable circumstance, it always involves being somewhere with no pen–like being stuck in a car with no pen, or at the bottom of a well with no pen, or in prison with no pen. I have never been in prison or at the bottom of a well, but I have been in my car, bereft of anyway to write anything down, and believe me, it’s a really unfortunate experience.

There is, I have discovered, a magical interplay between the discipline of Writing Every Day, no matter what, and the bright moments of sudden insight, the discovery of something you hadn’t thought of, or hadn’t considered. When you write every day, no matter what, you get better not only at coping with the taunting, white page, but overall better at thinking about anything at all. The more you write, the more there is to think about. And the more you think, the more interesting every corner of life becomes. Instead of the depressing cycle of carb eating–I am tired, I will eat a bagel, I am tired because I ate a bagel, I will sit in my chair and recover from the bagel, I will now eat a second bagel–the writing cycle is all about enthusiasm and energy, and even sometimes standing alone in a room smiling.

And on that note, I will arise and go about the day, which includes just a little bit more reading, but then hopefully pushing SEND and collapsing back for a few hours, before considering what to write next.