Professional authors will tell you they spend two hours every morning in front of their computers in their tiny upstairs offices, drinking coffee and creating impressive metaphors.
The only way to write is to just do it. Writer’s block is myth, they’ll tell you. Devote time every day to your craft goes the typical advice.
Well, they may be right, but that’s not how I do it.
I don’t sip. I gulp.
One of my new year’s resolutions was to “write something 30 minutes a day.” I’ve accomplished that goal, however lame or lofty, about half the time.
Thirty minutes a day. An hour a day. Two hours a day. At one time for another, I’ve pledged to do all those things. But it doesn’t work for long. I’ll leave my manuscript to languish for weeks. Months. Even years. By the time I get back to it, I’ve forgotten was a genius I was. And what a fool.
Then I dive back in. Head first. And write like an obsessed fan of episodic television newly available on Netflix. Forget thoughtfully savoring it; I devour.
Since the first of the year, I’ve managed to write for an hour or more (up to three hours) in a day about once a week on average. That’s me, binging.
That’s how I work, more often than not. My first memoir was written in three manic chunks, each two or three years apart. I lived, ate and breathed my story during those writing periods. And forgot about the point I was making in between. Another resolution I made this year was to write essays. I even managed to join a virtual writing group; the other women in the group inspire me, both with their own projects and their comments on mine. But I still tend to write those every-other-week essays—short works compared to book-length manuscripts—all in one day instead of a little bit at a time.
It’s confounding, because generally speaking, binging on anything is not a good idea. Everything in moderation and all that. And I profess liking to write. I do like to write! So why does it take so much effort to do it every day?
I’m going to continue to analyze this bad habit of mine. I’ll keep trying to write something every day. And by confessing it here, maybe I can hold myself accountable.
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The image above used to illustrate my write-like-your-hair’s-on-fire approach to creativity is a picture I took a few years ago at the Hess Art Museum at the Hess winery in Napa Valley. The piece by Leopoldo Maler is an homage to his uncle, a well-known Argentinean journalist, who was killed for the inflammatory content of his political essays written on an old Underwood typewriter like the one Maler used in his art work.
Monica Lee 