Writing Well

Stay Fit

What? You're telling us to exercise?

Nope. But I'm drawing a parallel that for some reason escapes most people who say they want to be a writer. To be good at something, you need to do it a lot. Not in spurts and fits, but as a practice.

To be a triathelete, you must run, bike, and swim. Daily.

To be a cake boss, you must bake cakes and decorate the sh*t out of them. Every day.

And to be a good writer, you must write. Like it's your job. Like it's the air you breathe. Like it's your insulin shot.

But wait, didn't you JUST tell us that some famous author said that this advice blocked her?

Yeah, well, many more famous authors have said that this is what they do. They don't wait for the muse to hit them. They maintain a daily practice of writing. Some do time limits: I'll write for two hours. Some do word counts: I'll write 1200 words. And some do page counts: I'll write ten pages. EVERY DAY.

Because if you are serious about anything in life, you eventually have to make a commitment to it and make it a part of your every day life.

You get your butt in the chair, get a pen and notebook or boot up the laptop or pull out your tablet or whatever you use AND YOU WRITE.

Do YOU write every day?

Every day, I get up at 5 a.m. and slunk into the kitchen, make coffee, grab a muffin if we have some, read a prayer while I'm waiting for caffeine, and go to my computer. I usually spend about thirty minutes messing around on Facebook and Twitter before getting some work done. By work, I mean writing. Whether I feel like it or not. Whether I have something to write about or not.

So if you want to be a writer, and by that I mean make a living at it, as opposed to making it a hobby, you'll have to sit down in your chair and write. You'll need to carve out time to do it. Get less sleep, like me.

Start small, make it an easy commitment to begin. Say, thirty minutes. Skip watching one TV show at night, or get up a half hour early, or stay up a half hour late, whatever. Doesn't matter. Just make a time, and stick to it. Every day. Not for a week, or a month. As long as it is that you are telling yourself "I want to be a writer", you have to write.

Because the thing is with writing, you have to do a hell of a lot of it to get any good.

Just like being a triathelete. Or a cake boss.