JUST DO IT!

"I always wanted to be an author and be published. I figured the way to do that was to write a book." - Steve Martin

I think this quote must be part of his stand-up comedy routine! As anyone who writes will tell you - it isn't that easy. Especially the being published part! Still, there is something to the fact that in order to be a writer - you have to write! Not just talk about writing, or think about writing, or even read about writing...you have to sit in front of the blank page/screen and fill it up with words. Lately - this has proved to be difficult, if not impossible, for me. I decided that I just needed a swift kick in the pants - and so I bought this book. Pretty good, actually - although there are no magic words in it that have alleviated my problem - but lots of commiseration and encouragement. There is the account of John McPhee, who is considered to be one of the pioneers of creative nonfiction, with more than thirty books and one hundred articles to his credit. The story goes that in his early writing days, he tied the sash of his bathrobe to the chair in order to keep himself in the chair writing. Hmmmm....might work. Dennis Palumbo is quoted, "Writing begets writing; not writing begets not writing." See...nothing profound here, but truth put in a memorable way. And, I loved this paragraph:

"Your task as a writer is to write. Imagine if you were a plumber and you went to the house of someone who had hired you to fix his pipes. Would you tell him that you are afraid of failure so you are not really ready to work yet? Or that you have "plumber's block" and don't really know how to proceed? Or would you wait for the house to be completely quiet, with no distractions? Or would you attend plumbers' conference after plumbers' conference and listen to people say what a cutthroat business plumbing has become, much more competitive than when they started as plumbers? Or read book after book about plumbing before you touched a pipe? Or would you sit for hours trying to work out a strategy for approaching the pipes in an optimum way? No, you would think about it a little and then dive right in, working out the problems as you go."

Pretty good stuff. The author is a psychotherapist - so he jumps right in and shines a light on all the goofy excuses we give ourselves to keep from writing. So, I guess I have to stop reading the book now, and write something.

Does this blog entry count????