When I travel, I can't write.
When I'm too tired, I can't write.
When I'm not inspired, I can't write.
When I'm too busy at work, I can't write.
When I don't have an audience, I can't write.
When I'm not reading anything good, I can't write.
When I don't have an ending prepared, I can't finish a story.
These are my most common excuses for not writing. The reality is they're endless.
Although I did travel for a while back in August, it wasn't so much that I couldn't write, I just didn't want to. Writing fiction seemed very pointless and uninteresting compared to real life. Which is exactly the kind of attitude that places me squarely in the group of people for whom writing is a hobby, "to be taken up when the spirit moves me, or when the time is ripe, or when I have nothing better to do." Ironically, these reasons are valid reasons for writing all the time. Now, tomorrow, and next year, too.
"How many of you here really want to write?" asked Sinclair Lewis when invited to talk to a class on creative writing.
A forest of hands shot up.
"Then why the hell aren't you home writing?" the irascible author demanded, and strode from the room.
(This is taken from Pierre Berton's The Joy of Writing, by the way.)
He continues...
There is no substitute for it, I'm afraid, and it is in this initial stage that Pretend Writers are separated from the real species. The Make-Believe Writer doesn't really want to write; he simply wants the Aura. The real writer writes because he must.
He writes even when it is torture for him. He writes in despair, knowing how damnably difficult it is, feeling his own self-confidence drain away, realizing the goals he strives for can never be attained; and yet he writes because he cannot stop. He will forsake the company of his friends to write. He will ostracize his wife or mistress, disregard his offspring, abandon his social relationships, neglect his meals and his bed, cancel all engagements. But he will write.
When I'm too tired, I can't write.
When I'm not inspired, I can't write.
When I'm too busy at work, I can't write.
When I don't have an audience, I can't write.
When I'm not reading anything good, I can't write.
When I don't have an ending prepared, I can't finish a story.
These are my most common excuses for not writing. The reality is they're endless.
Although I did travel for a while back in August, it wasn't so much that I couldn't write, I just didn't want to. Writing fiction seemed very pointless and uninteresting compared to real life. Which is exactly the kind of attitude that places me squarely in the group of people for whom writing is a hobby, "to be taken up when the spirit moves me, or when the time is ripe, or when I have nothing better to do." Ironically, these reasons are valid reasons for writing all the time. Now, tomorrow, and next year, too.
"How many of you here really want to write?" asked Sinclair Lewis when invited to talk to a class on creative writing.
A forest of hands shot up.
"Then why the hell aren't you home writing?" the irascible author demanded, and strode from the room.
(This is taken from Pierre Berton's The Joy of Writing, by the way.)
He continues...
There is no substitute for it, I'm afraid, and it is in this initial stage that Pretend Writers are separated from the real species. The Make-Believe Writer doesn't really want to write; he simply wants the Aura. The real writer writes because he must.
He writes even when it is torture for him. He writes in despair, knowing how damnably difficult it is, feeling his own self-confidence drain away, realizing the goals he strives for can never be attained; and yet he writes because he cannot stop. He will forsake the company of his friends to write. He will ostracize his wife or mistress, disregard his offspring, abandon his social relationships, neglect his meals and his bed, cancel all engagements. But he will write.
Thus I never wrote in my daily notebook. However I did keep up with my writing with
The reason I stopped notebooking during that phase was similar to your reason. With a bit of a caveat.
So there was too much happening in my physical life that I didn't want to spend any of it writing into a notebook. An additional reason was I told myself 'I don't want to write what's on my mind right now down... because my mind is changing too much right now. nothing i jot down will remain true'
The hilarious thing about that last point is that even when my life is more static... a lot of the things i write down tend to become false later.
I feel this about living at the moment.