Wishcasting Wednesday--Beginning

What do you wish to begin?  That's the Wishcasting question this week.  I have no idea how Jamie comes up with these wonderful questions, but every week I find something in her queries that I really needed to be thinking about but either didn't know it or didn't make the time for.

I wish to begin walking the path to the life I want.  Right now, that means I want to begin a regular writing practice.  I've been focusing so much on doing things related to my creativity coaching business that I've been neglecting one of my deepest desires--to be a writer.  So, I need to find a way to incorporate my personal creative dreams with my business dreams.  And I'm going to begin that by going back to a regular writing practice.

On a related note, I want to begin the habit of regularly using my planner.  I think, among other things, it would help me with that regular writing practice.  And it hearkens back to the days when I always had a special, thick notebook I carried around with me where I kept notes and quotes and poems and ideas and writing snippets and dates.  And in those days, I was writing a lot.  So I want to pull this in to my new beginnings, too.

Just Write

“I think the hardest part is getting a draft finished. It’s important to stop thinking about writing and just write. It’s something I grapple with every day—stop thinking, start writing.” ~ Sara Gruen (From a Writer’s Digest interview with Sara Gruen, the author of the bestseller Water for Elephants.)

This quote hit me hard today. Probably because this is something I’m working with right now, my hesitancy to actually write. I am struggling with it, only half sure of the reasons for it, and it seems like everywhere I turn someone is telling me “just write.”

Just write. How? I don’t know. I want to be working on my novel. Novels. I am not working on them.

I have some ideas of things I can or should be doing to get back into them—reread the last 50 pages, do some character work to get a better handle on who my people are and what they would really do in various situations. I am not doing any of this either.

My hesitancy might hint at some deep-seated fears. They might. I’m sure there are fears hanging around in there. I can feel some of them, especially the fear that the book won’t be any good (Duh! First draft generally equals not so good) and the fear that I won’t know how to do good revisions and make a not so good book into something publishable.

I don’t think these are the reasons I’m not writing. Or at least not the main reasons. I think I am not writing because I have a habit of not writing. And possibly (probably) the idea of breaking that habit by writing something important to me—like my novels—is a bit too daunting.

I do know the way out of this. Writing. More specifically, writing practice. Various subjects, free writing, non-stop for 15 or 20 minutes a day. Over and over, every day, until the dam breaks. And then the novels can begin again.

I have brushed past this knowledge a few times in the past months. I don’t want this to be the thing I need to do. I want to be working on my stories. But that isn’t happening, and I need to break out of this not-writing habit. So, writing practice. This week and next week. Every day. 15 minutes.

To make myself feel better, I will allow research, character work, notes about my stories while I’m doing this. But I’m not going to actually do any writing for them. Not yet. May 5. I can start story writing then for the next Book-In-a-Week session.

I think I’ll use writing prompts as my starting points. I generally enjoy them, and they’re a good way to keep the focus on just writing and stay away from story (and isn’t forbidding myself from writing story just a fabulous way to build the desire?). Time to check out my favorite prompt site, Toasted Cheese, and get started.

Starting

Or maybe this is about not starting. Wanting to start, not quite knowing where, not quite being able to actually do it. I know what it is. I went through this last year when I came back to really writing after a long dry spell. I've been in a dry spell again, and now the pump needs to be primed. But I am hesitant. I'm letting doubts weigh me down and hold me back. How does this happen? Things were going so well last year, cruising along, and I told myself I would not go back to not writing. I get miserable and cranky when I'm not writing. I get angsty and depressed. So how did I let this happen? I guess it's the same way you fall off a diet or quit exercising. So hard to get the good habit started, so easy to let it slip away.

Anyhow, I do know how to fix this. I did it last year. The pump gets primed with words. Writing practice. Prompts and exercises from anywhere I find them. I have a few books to pick up at the library on Saturday. Thunder and Lighting from Natalie Goldberg and Steering the Craft from Ursula K. Le Guin. I have my notebook ready--not the perfect notebook I discovered last week, although I do have one of those on the way, but this one is a really perfectly sized spiral that's nearly finished. So, tomorrow I will pick a writing prompt, probably from Toasted Cheese, and I will write for 15 minutes. And so it begins...