On Writing...

"When you start to see colored footprints on the sidewalk, it's time to quit fucking around and call the doctor." - Stephen King

I write this not because it is some deep, philosophical quote, but because it's just a great example of what I love about SK's writing, and I kind of picked it at random. I'm sure we could all come up with much better, and many more, quotes from the master, but that's not my point here. My point is, he manages to write like real people think and talk and see the world and he does it so well and so prolifically, and I wish that I could do that.

I'm always amazed at just how much he has written and I think that is part of the reason he is so good. Because he writes a lot. And of course he is incredibly talented. But, say you have some talent, and you sit around thinking "I sure could be a great writer," but you just write a little bit here and there...you are never going to be a great writer. I think especially with the way that information travels and is shared in our world today, you have to be incredibly prolific to be noticed at all.

Last summer I decided to try out a novel writing workshop. I had a novel I'd been working on but put on the back burner, and wanted to see what I could do with it. The workshop was good and bad, and sometimes just plain weird, and everyone else quit before it was over, leaving me with this partially completed novel that I was really really sick of looking at and thinking about, so I just stopped writing altogether. I thought I'd take a week or so off. That turned into months. I think in a way the workshop really stunted my progress - we had to come up with around 10 pages a month and share it with the group. So I'd obsess over ten measly freaking pages for 30 days, then get all of these comments and want to change everything, and did not get very far with the thing, but just felt disgusted with it. It really broke up the flow of writing to such a degree that I didn't even feel like writing anymore.

But I learned a lot through that process. For example, I learned that I need to write more: more often, more words, more different kinds of writing. One good thing about it was that I was writing everyday. The bad thing was that I wasn't just letting it flow and going with it, but I was trying so hard to do it right or do a certain thing, that I fucked it all up.

One of the reasons I took the workshop was because I wanted to talk to other writers about the writing process, how does it go for them? What works? What doesn't? Because writing is as much about the process as it is the product. Some people like to stay up all night after their families have gone to bed, writing alone in the darkness. Me, I like to write first thing in the morning with buckets of coffee, and after running or walking. Usually by night time I'm brain dead. What works for you?