Being a writer can be a funny thing. At times I have all the confidence in the world that if I wrote for a living I could produce novel after novel with relative ease. Something happens when I write that I can only describe as either magic or divine intervention. I don’t really sit down with a plan or even a simple outline. I just sit down and write—and it happens. It comes to me as I go. Sometimes as I sit here at my kitchen table I laugh out loud because the ideas are so good. During days in which I know I am going to write I might think about where to start, but I don’t have pains over any sort of plan. It is like the ideas and characters and plots marinate in my brain in between my writing sessions and when I do write, they come together like all the people in a Michael Jackson video who all somehow know the exact same dance!
For the purpose of full disclosure, I do make notes about where I might be going with my writing. I think I might have made the last paragraph sound like I sit down at my kitchen table, throw fairy dust in the air, and as it falls on me I turn into the amazing robotic writer controlled by outer space forces. OK, OK—I actually think about my writing a lot. I just don’t obsess over it. It’s not a job—it’s a love.
On the other end of the spectrum, sometimes, right before I sit down to write I feel as if I should just start running like Forest Gump. I am so scared sometimes that my ability is going to disappear and never come back. Just today I wondered if it would be there. And let me tell you—it was! I sat down at the kitchen table in the 70’s camper and it happened as it always does. I don’t know why I worry. I have had a bad night here and there when it didn’t happen, but that has been extremely rare.
To get back to the title of this post, writing is a lot like an emerging love in that the unknowns provide the excitement. And now it is back to school tomorrow morning where I will think about “her” and the next time we will be alone.
For the purpose of full disclosure, I do make notes about where I might be going with my writing. I think I might have made the last paragraph sound like I sit down at my kitchen table, throw fairy dust in the air, and as it falls on me I turn into the amazing robotic writer controlled by outer space forces. OK, OK—I actually think about my writing a lot. I just don’t obsess over it. It’s not a job—it’s a love.
On the other end of the spectrum, sometimes, right before I sit down to write I feel as if I should just start running like Forest Gump. I am so scared sometimes that my ability is going to disappear and never come back. Just today I wondered if it would be there. And let me tell you—it was! I sat down at the kitchen table in the 70’s camper and it happened as it always does. I don’t know why I worry. I have had a bad night here and there when it didn’t happen, but that has been extremely rare.
To get back to the title of this post, writing is a lot like an emerging love in that the unknowns provide the excitement. And now it is back to school tomorrow morning where I will think about “her” and the next time we will be alone.
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