It was 1985, I was in a poetry group, and I also was planning to attend a writer's workshop out of state. My husband said, "If you really wanted to write, you would write, and you don't need to spend time with other people to do it."
But I knew the poetry group members did help me write better poems and that helped me get a few poems published. Still, some of the poetry group members who had been to (ta-dah!) the Breadloaf Writers Conference insisted that I wasn't a serious writer if I didn't get up at four or five every morning and write for one or two hours like William Stafford. Well, I had two children, I was teaching college English with papers to grade, and except for a few spurts, i just couldn't make myself do it. Recently, I read Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones (a book lots of people have known about for a long time). She began by describing the importance of one's habitual writing place and of writing every day. But she went on to tell of writing with a friend who is a writer in order to be motivated and be inspired. It can be at a coffee house or at each other's homes. Now, by a sequence of fortunate events, I've had the privilege of spending eight days at the home of a long-time friend while we both wrote, shared our writing with each other, and made a few suggestions to each other. First, this helped me write because I was highly motivated to make progress on the memoir I'm writing before I even got to her house. Second, during those eight days, I added new scenes to my book and filled it out based on my friend's suggestions. And third--guess what! Now I am getting up (not at 4 or 5 am because I'm retired and I can wait until 8 or 9) and writing for a few hours every morning. My friend and I plan to keep each other apprised of our progress. Writing every day is optimal--very important. Writing at a library or a coffee house does, as Natalie Goldberg says, break up the monotony and keep a person writing. Writing with a friend or a writing group is a blessing. The "if you're really serious about being a writer" advice can do more harm than good. My advice is: Keep your eyes on your goals and take advantage when good scenarios for writing present themselves.
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Having a solid block of time to work on my writing, without "most" distractions (never possible to eliminate all of them!) was definitely a needed opportunity for me to make progress on a project. After that solid block of time, regularly scheduling time each week keeps up the pace. But I look forward to another substantive block of time as well, and I'm thinking about how to make this possible. I really enjoyed reading Stephen King's On Writing and feel I learned a great deal--despite having done much professional writing in my field for many years, I am a novice in the kind of writing I am now trying to do. One thing that King noted in his book that I've taken to heart is that one cannot be a good writer without reading--a lot! He said he reads 60-70 books a year. My goal will not be quite that ambitious as I still have professional work to fit in as well, but I'm going to set that goal and keep it!
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Anna
8/5/2016 04:32:28 pm
Thanks for the comment, and you're really right about the need for reading! Maybe I'll ask several people, including you, to suggest books that have helped with writing, either as models or as wise advice. That would make a good blog!
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