Writing :: running
From Writing Down the Bones:
Some days you don’t want to run and you resist every step of the three miles, but you do it anyway. You practice whether you want to or not. You don’t wait around for inspiration and a deep desire to run. It’ll never happen, especially if you are out of shape and have been avoiding it. But if you run regularly, you train your mind to cut through or ignore your resistance. You just do it. And in the middle of the run, you love it. When you come to the end, you never want to stop. And you stop, hungry for the next time.
Okay. Now replace every instance of the word run above with the word write. Nail? Meet hammer.
I have never been a fan of writing how-to books. Mostly because I’ve always *known* that in order to be a good writer, you must first be a regular writer, and I don’t need a book to tell me that writing is work, meaning you must do it every day even when you don’t feel like it. But apparently I DID need a book to tell me that, because in all the times I’ve read that exact advice it has never hit home as much as the paragraph above did.
Maybe that’s because I just finished more than two months of training for a half marathon. I couldn’t have woken up last week, not having prepared in advance, and run that 13.1 miles. Just like I won’t be able to wake up tomorrow morning and write a novel from beginning to end. And on days when it’s 20 degrees outside and the dog is warming my lap and I’m halfway through a good book, I still go out and run. But on the days I don’t feel like writing, I don’t write, and I sit around waiting for something revolutionary to happen, some muse to swoop down on golden wings and lead me to the Big Idea.
It’s time to start training.
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