Back to Work

A couple of people, both on and off the blog, have mentioned how much time it takes to write this blog. So I thought I'd time it. At this moment, it's 9:27 a.m. For me, these words I put here flow much quicker than those of fiction.

Since I promised to talk about writing one day, today seems like a good time for one of those posts. It's Monday and time to get back to work on my new work-in-progress.

I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I started writing fiction for three main reasons. One, I was a voracious reader and thought if others could write, so could I. After all, I wrote all sorts of things in my day job. Two, I thought I might make some money at it one day. I'm still waiting for that day to arrive. Three, and the most important, to get all the crapola out of my head.

That's right . . . to clear my little brain so I could think. All sorts of things floated around in there. Snippets of dialogue, plot what-ifs, character images, the whole enchilada in bite-size proportions.

The first stories I wrote rolled off my fingers like . . . whatever. I haven't had enough caffeine yet to think that clearly! Then I got down to work.

So here's my first writing lesson:
Write for yourself, not for anyone else.
Write for the sheer pleasure of telling a story or creating a character or painting a picture.
Write because you can't NOT write.

If you can't do those things, writing is probably not a good choice for you. Write because you must.

All the rest of the business follows. It's the work part. All the revisions, editing, marketing, networking can be fun, too, but it's the part that's done when you want to sell what you've written.

But the real creative, writing part . . . that's the part that's just for you.

End of lesson. The time is 9:41, so it took me 14 minutes to write today's post.