Pleasure or Pain?

I’m somewhat of an oddball. I like living in the woods, enjoy spending days on end in solitude, I don’t drink coffee (oh, pick yourself up), and when it comes to writing, there’s no fence sitting for me when it comes to the notion that one must chain themselves to their computer, typewriter, notepad, stone tablets and force themselves to write. I am anti-chains.

Bondage of that sort isn’t my thing. (Settle down.)

I have no doubt in your ability to string thousands of words together in a single sitting. Why, in today’s Twitterpated world, what writer wouldn’t be twelve kinds of tickled to sit down, knowledge in their fingertips, that they get to tap out more than a hundred and forty characters without worry of the dreaded minus sign flashing before them. But, I ask you, was there joy in your process, or did it seem like you were toiling, grasping for the next idea, plot line, character development?

Did dialogue flow freely or were your characters forced to utter contrived sentences?

Please, don’t get me wrong. If your heart swells with joy at the prospect of sitting down every day and writing, please close the door to the rest of the world and do us all a favor – write, write, write. However, if you read, or heard in a workshop that “real” writers pound the keys whether or not their Muse is available, but you find having to write places a strangle hold

snakearoundneck5 184x300 Pleasure or Pain?

on your natural creativity, please unshackle yourself from that useless trap. Turn off your computer, center the carriage on that old Underwood and cover it up, set down your pen; step away. Not to worry, it will all be waiting for you upon your return.

Now, do yourself a favor and take a walk in nature, or on the wild side; watch your favorite film, tickle your kids, snuggle with your loved one (right, Romance novelists?), or, better yet, read the book you wish you had written.

I recently read somewhere

that if today’s author isn’t putting out a book a year, they might as well hang up their writing cap. Really? Really? Have we come to that place where quantity is the means by which we judge the success of an author? Poor Harper Lee with only one Pulitzer Prize winning novel under her belt. How will Margaret Edson ever survive having written only one Pulitzer Prize winning play – and with no intention of another unless she has “something to say.” Talk about a novel idea.

Do I think writing a novel a year means they are less than stellar? Not at all. I simply implore you not to let the new “norm” define what it means for you to be a successful author. The proof is in the pudding: all you need is one Pulitzer Prize winning book or play. But even then, best not to quit your day job (Margaret didn’t).