It’s a hard thing to realize that writing is work. When I was a fresh-faced, limber, able-bodied wordsmith (you know, back in high-school) writing came fairly easily. It was all crap (of course I didn’t know it at the time); buy I could summon my muse and write for hours. Oh, the angsty dramas which dripped off my pen! Oh, the sheer, adjective-mortared walls of my once-upon-a-time short stories!
As time has progressed, I think I’ve gotten better at my craft, but not nearly as prolific. I’m an adult now, so I don’t make excuses– I don’t feel the burning passion about writing that I used to. Don’t get me wrong– it’s my favorite past-time, ever, ever, and I can’t imagine my life without it. But other things– like sleeping, for example, or interacting with people I like– have equal claim on my soul’s desires.
Writing, at this stage in my career, is exercise. Truly, no one loves the idea of exercising when they first roll out of bed in the morning. When their mouth is full of fuzz, their muscles tender and sore from a bad mattress. No one loves the idea of putting on a pair of sweatpants, or shoes that are still clammy and damp from the mile run you did last night. (People who say they enjoy these things are mutants. Hunt them down and kill them. No mercy for the gene-freaks.) BUT– you go. You do it anyway. You pull on those tatty old, socks that are funky no matter how many times you’ve washed them. You put on your shoes, lace them up, and discover you’re about to go outside in your underwear. You pull on those hateful old, navy-blue sweatpants, over your shoes, and struggle to get the elastic over the heel, because you didn’t want to bend over and take your shoes off, just to have to put them back on. You call this your warm up, and when it’s over, you step out of doors, walk through a spiderweb, and start your morning exercise.
And somewhere amid the pain and sweat, you remember that it DOES feel good to exercise, and that your body will thank you for it, and here you are alive and fairly healthy, and you’re DOING something to stay that way, because it feels good, dangit. NOW it feels good. It didn’t when you were starting out this morning, and you had almost no hope of it turning out well, but yes, it does, and it will.
Writing is like that too, for me. It’s something that takes a certain amount of discipline to do. Believe me, I didn’t WANT to compare it to exercise– but it’s the best analogy I’ve come up with, because it’s so opposite of what my character is about. I hate physical exertion. I have a real aversion to being out of breath. I hate not having my muse at my elbow, whispering into my ear everything I should write. I hate having to grind out words, rather than having them copy and paste themselves into MS Word for me, through the magyck of inspiration.
Once I get rolling, it’s all right. Screw inspiration; I’m twice the writer I was when it made things easy for me, because now I’ve WORKED at my craft, and I’ve conquered every page, every paragraph, and I am a freaking barbarian HORDE, and I will pillage this manuscript with blood and artistry, you better believe it. Muse? Bah! For panty-waisted effete types. The muse is like an interesting, eccentric aunt– she’s nice to have over for dinner, but heavens, she talks too much to have her stay on permanently. Put her up at the HoJo’s, and get on with the pillaging and blood and artistry. Frikkin’ Greek gods are all a bunch of sissies and perverts anyway.
YAWP!