I’d like to offer a special shout-out to Nikki, who spoke the four words that got me going tonight.
I am a firm believer that no one, writers most definitely included, should take themselves too seriously. We’ve all seen what happens to people who misplace their sense of humor behind their sense of self-importance. It can be entertaining for jackals on the sideline, but it is not flattering at all to the person suffering the public breakdowns often accompanying such delusions of greatness.
I have no such delusions, and should I ever develop an inflated sense of myself, I have at least a dozen close friends and family members who would step up quickly and slap me back into reality.
My biggest problem is not taking my job as a writer, and my work, seriously enough, and my greatest challenge is making it to the desk and opening the story I should be working on.
Things get in the way, stealing small chunks of my time.
Laundry needs done = half my weekend.
Dishes need done = a half hour gone.
“Honey, can you run to the store for bread?” = an hour or more, depending on the checkout lines.
The kids are fighting, again = about an hour a night.
Help the wife or kids with homework = infrequent, but not unheard of.
Laundry needs done = half my weekend.
Dishes need done = a half hour gone.
“Honey, can you run to the store for bread?” = an hour or more, depending on the checkout lines.
The kids are fighting, again = about an hour a night.
Help the wife or kids with homework = infrequent, but not unheard of.
All of those things, and more, eat into the free time I have to work on my stories, but they are a part of life and I can’t avoid them. I grumble, but I do them.
Other things, unnecessary things, get in the way too. Video games, television (I don’t watch many TV shows, but I love movies), and my biggest weakness, the Internet, take up far too much of my time.
I know I’m putting myself behind when I log online and surf to the message boards I frequent, but I justify it by saying I have readers and fans there, and that maintaining an active profile helps sales. This may or may not be the case, but there comes a point when I’m spending so much time playing online that I don’t get enough writing done. It’s mostly BS anyway, the fact is that I enjoy playing on the message boards. I find other excuses; I’ll only check a few threads, I’m too tired/frustrated/hungry/scattered to write tonight, there’s no way I can make my goal tonight so why start?
Feel free to add your own excuse.
I can blame some of these diversions on fear, my greatest fear as a writer is taking a good idea for a story and screwing it up. I can blame some of them on exhaustion, long workdays and my list of household chores sap a lot of my ambition. What it comes down to, the real nitty-gritty you could say, is not taking my job as a writer seriously enough.
The fact is that my books sell. Limited editions at $50 a pop are not always fast movers, but my latest sold out on publication. Editors write me to request stories, or to ask about publishing future books. Readers seem to like my work. Book collectors are padding their shelves with my books. I am not just doing this for fun anymore. People are paying me for my stories. People are collecting and reading my work. People are asking for more. I owe it to them, as much as myself, to take my job more seriously.
I know what I’m capable of producing when I’m focused, and when I’m taking my work seriously. When a writer (or a painter, musician, athlete, etc) reaches the point where they understand what they are capable of, it becomes their job to meet, and if possible surpass that level of productivity. They can only do that when they are focused, and have made the decision to take their work seriously.
Aspiring and struggling writers beware the trap of laziness, complacency, and distraction. Many writers better established than I am have fallen into it, and their productivity has suffered.
Writing should be fun, but it is work. When you reach a place in your career when editors and readers begin to take your work seriously, it’s time for you to do the same.
Brian Knight
7 Comments, Comment or Ping
Sully
This has that one-size-fits-all feel to it. Be curious to see if there are any but very new writers out there who can’t relate to this. “Laziness, complacency, and distraction…” — could add a few synonyms to that, but for me those are more the symptoms of the cause, which is fear at some level. Maybe frustration, too, if that isn’t just another kind of fear. Quitting or avoidance is a relief from stress, the same way depression (which we talked about a month or so back) can be a vacation from dealing with reality in a way that risks rejection. Ditto not writing in order to punish the world for not loving us. But maybe Brian is portraying a new phase of it here. What do you do when you’ve acquired the “habits” of avoidance et al and suddenly you are succeeding? You can get comfortable with a certain work load (or lack of) and then the demands can become…well, a demand. Interested in what others have found. Thanks for this honest glimpse, Brian.
– Sully (Thomas Sullivan)
Oct 10th, 2006
Mark Rainey
Yes, I can relate, for sure. One thing I have to do more now than I used to is get away from the computer for extended periods. I’m on it all day at work and then most of the evening. My eyes and wrists have begun howling in protest, and I’m trying to listen to them before the problems get too severe.
–M
Oct 10th, 2006
Frank Wydra
Hey Brian, right on. The only way I can avoid the distractions is to put writing first. Just sit down at the console and do it until I’ve hit my target. Let one thing–a walk, a TV show, a scintillating conversation, a provocative statement, that screen door I’ve been meaning to fix, a cool web site–sneak in before the writing is done and the discipline is lost. All those little gremlins that crawl through our lives can vanquish the writing dragon as surely as microbes can lay a man low.
Frank
Oct 10th, 2006
Brian
Sully, as always you summed it up perfectly. I do think fear is the root cause of most of our avoidance issues. For me the key is just to plow through the story and not worry about the fine points until the second draft. Sometimes the first draft isn’t as bad as I thought it would be
Mark, that is tough. You developing carpel tunnel?
Frank, we have the same demons
Oct 10th, 2006
Janet Berliner
Fear of writing and fear of not writing. Twin demons.
Janet
Oct 10th, 2006
Brian
Conjoined twins even. Scary stuff!
Oct 10th, 2006
John B. Rosenman
Fear of writing. Sure, that’s it. Why write this story (or novel or whatever else) because it will only be at best a semi-failure?
Good piece, Brian. We do need to be more serious about writing and dedicated to it. You know, we can socialize and network and party all we want, but I am convinced that writing is ultimately a private business. We do it alone and many of us need to do it alone more often.
Oct 14th, 2006
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