Routine

I sit here in my office on the morning after a major shoulder surgery. I haven’t posted a Blog entry in a while, so I thought it would be a good exercise to, 1) See if the pain meds effect my writing and 2) See how fast I can type with one hand. On a good day when the juices are flowing and ideas are coming easy, I have been known to throw down 100+words a minute… it just took me two minutes to write these three lines…hmmm. I will, however, not let it stop me so this brings me to the subject of this Blog: Routine.

I try to write something everyday. It doesn’t have to be a whole chapter. Just something… anything. I even count writing notes down that have come to me during the day in my ideas book. These may not be fully hashed out or ready to go in the book, but I am taking the time to put something to paper. For however long that takes I have been a writer and to me that’s what it’s all about.

I have written a book. I am nearly finished with the sequel to that one and I have produced large chunks of other, free standing projects. While it is true that I have yet to be published, I am a writer. I do it everyday and I am amassing a catalogue of work. The most important thing is that I believe I am getting better at my craft. Or so I think. (So far the reading team that is made up of volunteers who have gotten in touch with me through the contact page haven’t said I totally suck. So that’s something.)

As stated in a previously posted Blog, I treated writing my first book as a job. By doing that, it was easy to produce a complete, hundred thousand word manuscript in three months. The real challenge came after that. I strutted around like I was big stuff, proud as a peacock. Now what? I had many many pages of ideas but I hit a wall. Mentally I had achieved a goal that I had been nursing for the majority of my life. Some days I would sit in front the computer like a constipated man trying to squeeze out a turd. I needed some writing Ex Lax! Building a routine was just what the Doctor ordered.

In my opinion, and it is only that, you have to become obsessed with the project at hand. I was with the first book so I needed to re-wire my brain to be that way with the next project and the next and so on. It is this mental toughness, mental stick-to-it-iveness that makes great athletes, great chefs, great anything! It has to hold true for writing, right? So with that in mind I made myself do it every freakin’ day. Some days I may come home after a shit day at work and just not feel it. Early on I would have probably let this be an excuse for skipping writing that day. Now I use the writing time as therapy after that kind of day. I look forward to sitting down at my desk and decompressing. I’ll admit that some days writings are better than others but that is not the point. I… or you… can always edit that pile of shit you wrote at some other time. What I just wrote above came off the top of my head and may be the biggest pile of drivel ever, but I wrote something, didn’t I. What did you write today?