There are many things, I suspect, that we would like to think help us to write. Maybe we just hope that there are things–like pills that help you lose weight while you sleep or get rich quick schemes–that will allow us to tap into our writing creativity quickly.
Some of the rowdy good old boys of writing thought heavy drinking would do the trick. I’m thinking here of the Fitzgeralds and Hemingway and Dylan Thomas (whoever he was). (If you got that reference, congratulations, you’re as old as I am.)
Turns out, some of them could write despite their alcohol abuse, but alcohol didn’t confer some writerly status on them.
Nowadays, many writers turn to leisure and flexibility as those magic potions that are going to help them write or write more or write better or maybe just run a profitable business.
I’ve talked to people who want to avoid all workaday structure and claim that they just know that if they had no alarm clock or fixed working hours or any impediments blocking their way to near-constant luncheons, shopping trips, and visits to the local cinema, they would become the great writers they were destined to be. In fact, some people pursue leisure with the goal that it will one day make them a good writer.
I enjoy a great many things. Just to prove it, I will list some: I like to watch cats. I like to sit in the backyard. I like really good barbecue, particularly if I can eat it in the backyard watching my cats climb a tree. I like talking to little kids. I like snow, if I don’t have to shovel it. I like really good crime novels and fireplaces and hardware stores. I like colored gemstones, particularly in rings, and most particularly when the ring is on my finger. I like traveling to Paris and inflicting my French on the unsuspecting citizens. I like cold ice tea on a hot day. I like the feeling you have when you finish a marathon. I like carrot cake. I like to watch Fred Astaire in any movie and Gene Kelly in most of his movies. I like the Marx Brothers and the Colbert Report and Matt Lauer and listening to the radio on the Internet. I have three iPods.
So you can see, I’m not really the sort of sour unhappy person who does not like puttering around, wasting time. I enjoy leisure. I have watched cats and done the things on my happy list (and more besides) to possible excess.
None of them have helped me write. Writing is all about sitting down at a keyboard and writing. Alas, there is considerable joy in the “pre-writing” phase, where you can think about writing or rejoice about getting a paying gig or ponder the deep crannies of the opus you are about to create. None of that is writing, although sometimes it’s fun.
Writing is about sitting down and writing. The best way to do it is to have a workday. Depending on where you’re at, it may be 8-5 Monday through Friday or it may be 9 to midnight every evening or maybe it’s just two hours you steal on Sunday afternoon. Whatever it is, set it aside. Put a fence around it. Guard it.
And when that time comes, sit down and write. Force yourself to sit down at a keyboard. If you don’t feel like writing at that time, do not let yourself get up. Just sit there. No writer can sit more than a few hours at a keyboard without writing something, so you’ll get to work.
Watching cats won’t help you write, but a writing schedule will.
