Don’t Just Sit There…Write Something

DON’T JUST SIT THERE…WRITE SOMETHING
By Barbara Fox

I decided to become a writer in the first grade when my story about dolls. “I have two dolls; their names are Susan and Caroline. I love them. I play with them everyday” was published in the school newspaper.

Since then I’ve written countless newspaper articles, short stories, interactive mystery plays, ten minute (and longer) plays, and three mystery novels; my day feels incomplete unless I’ve written something. Seeing my byline on an article in the newspaper or my name on a book cover is such a satisfying, gratifying thing, I love doing book signings and talking about writing and being introduced as an author but there is this one problem and evidently, it’s one many writers have in common. It is very hard to be self-disciplined, to make the time and find the motivation to actually sit down at the computer and write.

I can find so many excuses not to write. There are so other things to do, really vital things like going to a dance or exercise class, rearranging my closet, calling a friend, going to the beach, trying this new recipe which involves going shopping, even taking a nap so my mind will be fresh. I can think of a million reasons to avoid sitting down and staring at a blank piece of paper. Once I begin, really begin, I’m okay and I can keep going for hours but it’s getting started that’s so hard. I seem to need pressure, a deadline and right now, I don’t have any of those, No editor is standing over me demanding a story “right now”, no publisher or agent is telling me the book is due “in two weeks”. I don’t even owe a letter to a friend and my journal is hidden in the bottom drawer.

I asked other writers for ideas and suggestions; One of them (who shares my problem) repeated the following quote (he didn’t tell me who said it).

“Writing is 10% inspiration and 90 % perspiration”; another suggested sitting at the computer and not getting up until I had written a thousand words every single day, another said to set a particular time each day to write and still another said to print out the pages as I write them so I can see the tangible results of my work.

They all sounded good so, I’m going to try all of them. I’ll schedule writing time every day between 9 and 10 am, ( and I’ll turn off my cell so I can’t get calls or text messages) I’ll write at least five hundred words (and work up to the thousand) I’ll print out the pages. Whoops! I don’t have ink for the printer; I’d better go to the store. No! No! No! I don’t need ink. I’m not leaving the computer. I’ll sit right here until I finish this article and then I’ll post on my blog so I will see each beautiful word in print. Maybe other people will read it which is, after all, the whole idea of writing.

If I start this routine (and stay with it) maybe I’ll actually write the fifth book in my Inn series. I already have Murder In The Inn, Another Murder in the Inn, Murder In Another Inn and Mysteries In the Inn finished and published (they are available from the website booksbybarbara.com) and I’m just starting Recipes In The Inn.

So, this is the beginning of my new writing life. The page is filling up nicely, only two hundred and ten more words to go!

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Barbara Fox is the producer/director of Mystery On The Menu, an interactive theater company she founded in 1986 in Washington DC.  She writes, produces, directs and acts in the participatory plays and, through the years has presented “too many plays to count” for corporate and private events at hotels, restaurants, resorts and aboard trains and cruise ships.

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing