Showing posts with label maxims. Show all posts
Showing posts with label maxims. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

What Do Authors Do For Fun?

Such a ridiculous state of affairs. Although I maintain that I am writing a novel, the fact remains that at the end of the day I have usually accumulated not one satisfactory page of manuscript. And this for some unguessable reason is, for me, intolerable.

Yesterday my daughter posted on Facebook a maxim that made sense to me. It was:

"Healthy habits are learned in the same way as unhealthy ones -- through practice."
--Dr. Wayne Dyer

When I read that my first thought was: Now that makes sense to me.

And I mused upon that sensible idea for a time.

By the end of the day I had concluded that my next step should be to set aside a portion of time each (and every) day wherein I allow myself to do nothing but write... and that means write my book.

It does not mean that I should THINK about writing -- not READ about already established writers and how they go about practicing their particular personal craft (or their art) of writing -- NOT scribble notes for my blog -- not check and re-check my email -- not absently MUSE upon my novel's theme or its originality or its publishability -- but that I should WORK at it by planting my seat on the chair and pounding the keyboard's keys until my absolutely-allotted time for this and EVERY day's WORK has expired.

Noble sentiment, is it not?

Now . . . to DO it.

. . .

Here is another piece of wisdom:

If we believe something about the world, we are more likely to passively accept as truth any information that confirms our beliefs, and actively dismiss information that does not.

. . .

Do I truly believe that I am a writer?

Do I really want to write a novel?

I'll have to ask Eva those questions and then pay attention to the answers.

Or . . . I could just sit myself down and write the novel.

Yes . . .