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The Writing Life!
By Denis Ledoux
"Inch by inch, it's a cinch. Yard by yard, it's hard."
All week, I have been writing in snippets. In the mornings after my coffee and journal writing, when I sit down at my laptop, I face, as does every writer, a demanding master: writing for the day.
Oh, I wish it were an hour from now!
Most days, my own memoir writing is not long. Perhaps an hour. Then I need to move on to the numerous chores that are attendant on keeping a business and a home going.
Recently, it seemed that I have been writing only in snippets. I'd open a file and find there 200 words I had written, say, several days earlier. Then I would think, "Ok, today, I bring this vignette to a completion," but lately it seemed that I could only write another few hundred words before I'd feel like moving on to something else--anything else but this dreadful text that was killing me! What I was writing that day was only trash. Any junior high school writer could do better, for heaven's sake! So I'd think, "I better move on to another story. Let this 'meretricious melodrama' incubate for a while longer."
I'd open another document. "What do you know, this story fragment already has 500 words. I'll pitch right in with some editing. Get those five hundred words into shape." By the time I got to the end of the text, I was able to add a few hundred new words and, by the time that was done, it was the end of my hour and, with great relief, I realized I could move on and still call myself a writer.
It seems that I have had a lot of mornings that have been that way recently.
"Even so, how much have I managed to write?" I thought to myself.
To my amazement, I had written several thousand words over the time of a little more than a week. While none of it is deathless prose, and I don't know how much of it will survive into a finished memoir, it is nonetheless always easier for me to rewrite and edit than to produce a fresh text. So...
This last while writing has not been so bad after all. I've kept at my work and I've produced some text to serve as a basis for a memoir. I've had new memories for my Memory List and have pondered over the theme of my current work.
"Inch by inch, it's a cinch. Yard by yard, it's hard."
If you don't show up for the work, it doesn't get done. It's as simple as that--and as hard.
EXERCISE:
Next time you are writing and feel like quitting, don't.
~ Move on to another story snippet or to another item on your Memory List.
~ Don't insist on perfection.
~ Go for showing up and writing.
copyright 2009 © Soleil Lifestory Network
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