Just Sit Down and Write

At last...I found a new template for the blog that I like and has no random black boxes hanging out in annoying places or difficult html hiding around the corner just waiting to cause me trouble. I think this is what I'm going with for awhile. What do you guys think?

There will still be lots of little updates. I plan on updating my profile, reorganizing tags (so they aren't so haphazard), and more behind the scenes work. But for you readers the biggest change is the general look and that's finally done.

Moving on.....I figured it was time I get back to blogging about writing, something I haven't done this past week, but that's beside the point. (haha)

I have a question for you...

What is it that makes you sit down and write? I'm not talking about your inspiration for a story right now, but instead what makes you physically stop with work and chores and other life 'duties' just for the sake of writing. What makes you pick up that pen or grab that keyboard? What makes you willing to stop doubting yourself long enough to actually write the next word in the grand adventure that your soul lives everyday?

I think a lot of us struggle with this, and I am very much a part of that group. There is always something I can think of that I should be doing instead of scribbling. Especially since publication and a career are still only distant dreams. Time itself can be very discouraging.

I have a very bad habit of sitting down to write, but only giving myself five or ten minutes to actually start writing. Then if nothing comes I abandon the endeavour and go back to whatever I was doing before. Let me just tell you this is a terrible terrible idea. And people who write for a living will tell you the same thing even more adamantly.

Nanowrimo actually taught me the value of sitting down to write, even when you feel no inspiration. This is a lesson I already knew, but one I had not lived. (And I don't know about you guys, but more often than not I have to discover for myself what I already know before I truly believe it.)

I read back through my posts on my first Nano experience over the weekend. It was fascinating to me to read my own highs and lows, something that seems like a blur now. And what was even more fascinating to me? I don't remember the lows, but I remember the highs. And I definitely had more lows than highs. Days I didn't write, days I barely wrote, days I wrestled with characters behaving badly, days I doubted myself... But I don't really remember any of them. I just remember the handful of days that took me on an amazing adventure. Days that surprised me. Days that proved this story is infinitely bigger than I ever will be. Those are the days I remember.

Some of those days I sat for an hour or more, staring at a page with nothing on it, feeling like the few words I eked out where written in blood and sweat. But some of those words were the best parts of the plot. I have to be patient. We all have to be patient. No matter how much we bubble over inside with our stories, we have to be patient with writing them. We have to tend them, care for them, feed their inspiration, nurse them when they're ill-written or they'll never be the pride and joy of ours that we imagine them to be.

So back to the question for you. What makes you stop everything and step back into the world you know is begging to be written?

For me: the soundtrack to Pan's Labyrinth. Such beauty, such delicate grandeur...if I turn it on I refuse to stop staring at my blank page of writing until the soundtrack ends. For the next hour and fifteen minutes I am transported to my world. I may come out victorious; or I may come out beaten and bare, dragging my broken mind away to the infirmary for rehabiliation. But no matter what, I spent and hour and fifteen minutes in my world. Living it, breathing it, and existing in an ever-present state of awe. And at the end of the day, isn't that what we strive for more than fame? More than money?

Yours Truly,
Mrs. C