Do you ever go through a whole day without writing?
I don’t think I’ve had very many days in my life when I didn’t write something—a chapter, an article, a book proposal, a poem, a press release or other promo, a journal or blog entry, a letter or email, a note on a birthday card, instructions or at least a list of some importance.
How about you? Is the desire to write a part of your being? Do you delight in staying organized by writing lists, keeping friends/family informed through notes, expressing yourself through the written word? Do you crave time with your current writing project? Do you get enough time to write or do you often feel deprived of this creative outlet?
Certainly, a job, family obligations, illness and other serious life challenges can get in the way of your writing. How does this make you feel?
I talk to writers who hold a great deal of resentment because they don’t have the time to write as much as they would like. Some of them have legitimate obstacles making it impossible to sit and write, to concentrate on writing or to make the time to write. But many others simply don’t know how to organize their life so that they can write. They don’t believe that they can accomplish anything of consequence within the brief periods of time they have available to write. Some just don’t have the heart of a writer and they simply aren’t motivated to make the sacrifices necessary to pursue writing as an interest or a career.
A woman asked me once, “How can I make myself sit down and do the writing I want to do?” I told her that she has to want it badly enough. She has to discover her particular motivation for wanting to write. If it is pure, she will succeed in her goals. If her motivation is frivolous, she will continue failing.
I once wrote a 200-page book in 8 months while working a full-time (8 to 5) job. How did I fit it into my schedule? I got up a few hours earlier every weekday and wrote before going to work. I also wrote some on the weekends.
Once the book was finished, I used those same early morning hours to establish myself as a freelance article-writer. And this was before computers. After another 8 months spent writing and submitting articles to magazines, I was able to quit the job and go to work full-time as a writer.
I know that there are others who have met much greater challenges in order to write. I can’t even imagine writing with small children under foot, yet thousands of parents do so and some of them quite successfully. Seriously stressful life situations prevent many would-be writers from producing. However, some people are quite capable of corralling that stress and using it to create amazing pieces of written work.
What category do you fit into? Do you need absolute order, space, silence and peace of mind in order to write? Or can you write at anytime, anywhere, under any conditions? Is your motivation to write pure (you are in love with the process of writing, you seriously want to establish a writing career, you have something you want to share with others)? Or is your motivation frivolous (you think you can get rich writing, you want to write a book just to show off, you have an opinion and you want to cram it down the throats of readers)?
Are you happy with your current status? Or would you like to spend more time writing? Maybe it’s time to make any adjustments that would facilitate your deepest writing desires. How?
1: Consider where you are, as a writer, and where you would like to be.
2: Carefully and thoroughly examine your motivation to write.
3: Evaluate your situation and explore how you could alter it to meet your writing desires.
4: Get creative in re-organizing your time and space.
5: Make a reasonable commitment to yourself and honor it.
If you need a boost to help you get started as a freelance article-writer, sign up today for my online, on-demand article-writing workshop.
http://www.matilijapress.com/course_magarticles.htm
If you have a book to promote, sign up for my book promotion course. You have 4 days to sign up for the course that is running now: Deadline for this session is September 14, 2009.
http://www.matilijapress.com/course_bookpromotion.htm
By the way, about 8 years after I wrote the book in 8 months, I self-published it. Quest for Truth is the true story of my unexpected exploration of the supernatural. If you are interested, check it out at http://www.matilijapress.com/questpage.html