Answer: They've all -in their own natural, unthreatening ways- been convicting me about writerly procrastination.
When some writers procrastinate or go way out of their way to do other things instead of write, there's usually a reason for it. As a creative writing teacher, I hear these stories and say, "Well, it sounds like there's something scary in your writing that you're avoiding" or "Maybe your idea is just so big that you're blocking yourself." The latter might be true as there are just too many ideas floating in my head and I don't know which one to write first. But recently I've also discovered that it's a seasonal thing: as a teacher, I want to pack as much into summer as it can possibly hold, which so far has included Disneyland, Portland, and, unfortunately, tonsillitis. It's also included an increase in reading and I'm proud to look back and recognize that I've read:
-The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost
-Old Man in the Sea by Hemingway
-On Paris by Hemingway
-The Kiss by Kathryn Harrison
-The Thin Man by Dashiel Hammett
-Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
-The Road by Carmac McCarthy
-More F in Exams/F for Effort by Richard Benson
-Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
-Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald by Scott Donaldson
-Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
-The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
Um, that's 12 books, guys. That's three books short of a grad school semester's load. Now all I need to do is write an annotation for all of them and I've just completed 12 credit hours. I don't slight it by any means, but no wonder I've only managed to write a short bit when my focus has been so unfalteringly upon reading -okay, reading with interrupting for grading ENG101, writing freelance articles, and day-tripping.
Someone kindly told me that freelance writing is still writing -writing that I'm getting paid for- so I shouldn't be so harsh on myself. But I am hard on myself, because what creativity comes from writing about pterodactyl sightings or "How to Properly Sit in a Kayak"? Some of these might take creativity to make them interesting, but at the end of the day, my artistic hunger isn't sated for it.
Then the reading started speaking to me. Hemingway was frustrated with Fitzgerald because Fitzgerald didn't take the time to write, and when he did, he would block himself so much that all he was good for was sweet little stories for The Saturday Evening Post instead of real, important work. Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist as a serial over the course of two years. For two years he'd committed to one story line, printing chapters weekly. No breaks. No apologies. No "Well, I just don't feel like it." I read The Paris Wife in two days, a historical fiction novel from the perspective of Hadley, Hemingway's first wife. Even through fiction Hemingway doesn't alter his course. He pisses people off because he needs time to write. He has vision. He is unapologetic. He has focus.
So in the vein of wanting to write creatively but stuck in freelance writing mode, here are five tips for catching a pterodactyl -or rather, keeping a consistent writing practice:
1. Show up. Nothing gets written if you just dream about what you're going to write about.
2. Outline if your ideas are too big.
3. Give yourself permission to only write about one facet of your big idea.
4. Set a timer and commit to the time. It doesn't have to be all day, it can be 20 minutes.
5. Give yourself permission to write all crap. The longer you wait to come back to writing, the harder it'll be, so it's best to write something -anything- now. Even if it's crap. Especially if it's crap. It can only get better from there.
Ready. Set. Go.
