Who’s Your “Writing Bestie?”

Writing every day can be treacherous and tiring, harrowing and heartbreaking or, on those fabulous days, like one big party.

Creativity guru, Julia Cameron, says the role of an artist is to show up and let the work move through them. But what about those days when you show up and nothing moves? No sentences or brilliant ideas flash onto the page. No prose, purple or otherwise, dances from your fingertips.

What’s a desperate writer to do?

Cry? Rage? Clean out the pantry? The healthiest answer I’ve found is to commune with a friend. Maybe it’s a phone call or ten minutes on social media. Perhaps it’s a writing sprint with your buddies. Our besties help us get past those days when the writing muse is taking a nap and our evil inner editor is taking aim at our spirit.

However, writing is a solitary endeavor and sometimes we just have to go it alone. It’s reassuring to have a “writing bestie,” an extra helpful something to get you to the chair.

Who is your writing bestie? Is it your sweet doggie, who sleeps on your feet and tugs on your pant leg when it’s time to take a walk? The purring cat who lays on your keyboard and sleeps over your printer? The barista who smiles at you in Starbucks every day as you pound out pages? Maybe it’s your sprint team on Twitter, your writing space, or your favorite table at your local library.

For me, it’s my coffee pot. My coffee mugs, really. I have different mugs for different moods and different moods for different tasks. And, like many people, there is no creativity flowing through my brain without several serious slugs of caffeine.

I’ll share my favorites with you.

There are mugs to ease me through the agony of mornings, when I can barely see and my first grader wants me to find her favorite pair of shoes. And make breakfast. And walk her to school. And talk to people. Before my morning cuppa. *shudders*

There are the days when I have to fake it till I make it. When I have no energy at all. Zero. Zilcho. Not a creative word in the entire noggin. When the only sound in the Creative Bat Cave is annoying, chirpy crickets.

Sometimes I’m feeling bitchy and I need a reminder of why I do this thing. I do it because I love words, and because it’s a wonderful thing for my child to watch her mother chase dreams.

And there are days when I’m on fire. On fire with words and thoughts. The movie in my head is playing a double-feature of awesome. Those are the great days. The days we all dream about, when it’s grand to be on this writing ride.

(p.s. That mug is available from The Rumpus Store.)

But you never know when that day will come until you sit down and let those words move through you to the page. I use my coffee addiction to bribe myself to the page. No writing, no coffee.

My BFF is a powerful motivator.

There’s a lot to be said for just showing up.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s (incredibly amazing) TED talk references these two elusive ideas – the concept of “showing up” and the creative muse.

Gilbert expressed it this way: “..what I have to sort of keep telling myself when I get really psyched out about [writing] is don’t be afraid. Don’t be daunted. Just do your job. Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be.

“If your job is to dance, do your dance. If the divine, cockeyed genius assigned to your case decides to let some sort of wonderment be glimpsed, for just one moment through your efforts, then ‘Olé!’ And if not, do your dance anyhow..Olé! to you, nonetheless, just for having the sheer human love and stubbornness to keep showing up.”

So many new writers think they have to build a writing temple, a schedule, a process, develop some sort of structure, all so their ethereal muse will have a set destination arrive.

[All the professional writers here probably just peed themselves laughing.]

The secret, my friends, is in showing up. It’s finding a BFF who helps you show up, be it a pet, a writing partner or a coffeepot.

Just showing up – day after day, deadline after deadline – can be your great act of writing courage. Especially when the only thing coming from your fingertips is crappy writing and hangnails, showing up each day, or each week, is an act of defiance that will pay off.

Wherever you are on your writing journey, DON’T STOP. And drink more coffee. Get some inspiring mugs. For some of us, caffeine is our benevolent elixir of creativity, but you might have a different one. Tell us about your writing bestie. Where did you find it, and what does it do for you?

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By day, Jenny provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm, all while heavily caffeinated. By night she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction and short stories. After 18 years as a corporate software trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.

When she’s not at her personal blog, More Cowbell, Jenny can be found on Twitter at JennyHansenCA or at Writers In The Storm.

 

Tags: featured, writing besties

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing