I’ve been up for five hours. In that time, I’ve thought about the writing projects I need to accomplish today. While sorting sheets, towels and coloreds into piles, ideas whip through my mind like the lightning-quick orb that bounces around in a pinball machine: which article should I work on next in the nutrition series? What questions do I need to ask for the article on bullying? What approach do I want to take with the best friends column? Which other magazines should I query? These thoughts and more accompany me, along with the laundry basket, into my husband’s man cave (otherwise known as The MC).By the time I finish tidying up, I notice that the garbage bag with fly tying remnants and empty chewing tobacco cans needs emptying. And so begins a digression into the unimportant but necessary tasks around the house that need doing RIGHT NOW: taking out the trash and recycle bins (after all, tomorrow is pick up day), doing the laundry, washing and putting away dishes, changing the sheets, cutting the pink and blue tinged hydrangea flowers growing outside under the kitchen window to put in a vase on my husband's desk in the MC. (Since he's in training this week at a new job, I’m doing some of his usual household chores. And, I think, "some flowers might be nice".)
After several more minutes on email and Facebook, I begin to feel depressed at the recognition that my once time-abundant morning has rapidly disappeared. Daily I tell myself that I’m going to start writing early (like a real, regular 8-5 job) but somehow there’s always something else to do first. It’s now noon. And I’m just sitting down to write.
I work my way up to writing by drafting questions and scheduling interviews for my upcoming articles. Although not actually writing, I tell myself that it’s necessary work that still has me moving in a writerly direction. But something doesn’t feel quite right. Who was it that only yesterday said, “Commitment is in the action not in the intention?” Oh, right. That was me.
Inspiration, contemplation and reflection are all good. In fact, they’re essential components to the creative process that is writing. But they are not a substitute for taking pen and yellow legal pad in hand (yes, I write longhand before transferring my drafts to the computer for editing). Endless reflection leaves me with many good ideas. Pen to paper produces the article, column or poem on which I’ve been reflecting.
Lately I’ve been reading Natalie Goldberg’s Wild Mind (you get the idea from my description of my thought process at the beginning of this article). I find it both comforting and disturbing. I’m comforted because I realize that the economic fears and insecurities that accompany the writing life (for those of us who aren’t JK Rowling or Stephen King) are often part and parcel of the agreement to write. I’m disturbed because now the covers have been pulled on my procrastination. I now have a voice of conscience on my shoulder asking, “Why aren’t you writing? Why are you sweeping the floor/cleaning the toilets/searching the Internet NOW? Why, you’re procrastinating!” It whisphers: Gotcha!
Truthfully, I don’t know why. I think it has something to do with both passion and pain. Somewhere deeply rooted within me is the desire and the drive to write. And it has been so ever since I could hold a pencil. That passion pushes me forward and when I’m in enough discomfort (which usually means financial insecurity is looming), I pick up the pen. But the beginning is always so difficult. I must constantly resist my resistance and battle my inertia. It’s pleasing to think about what I want to write, what I should write, or even what I need to write. But it’s only when I actually do write that I am responding to the inner edict telling me I must write.
So now it’s 1:25 and I’ve begun writing. I can now own that I’ve written something today. And even though it’s only an entry on my irregularly updated blog, it’s an open invitation, pregnant with possibilities, for the writing that must follow.
