The Writer Neurotic

Another archival post, the single one from my seldom-used LJ account, moved here for consolidation purposes.

May 17, 2007:

Current Mood: calm

It's a sunny day outside, the sky is blue, my daughters are young enough to want to play with Daddy all the time. Yet I reckon my days more by whether I've written my daily word quota or not. Don't get me wrong, I love my girls more than anything, and I make myself available to them every day and engage in the usual run of parental worry about whether I'm doing right by them. One of the cool things about being where I am in my life right now is that I have lots of time for the family.

Still.

Word count is always on my mind. I'm aware of unfinished stories and projects in the back of my mind like a brain canker.

A friend of mine back in my college days gave up her aspirations to become a writer because she'd gone to a con and heard Roger Zelazny speak on what it took to be a writer. In short, he said it took a *need* to write. If you weren't driven to write, if you weren't satisfied if you weren't writing, you probably would have a difficult time making it as a writer.

I spent most of the eighties writing limp-wristed laments about wanting to write, and not actually working on stories. Lesson learned is how to find the kind of discipline to write every day. My goal now is modest: 1,500 words per day four days a week. Then branch out from there. The idea is to get to six days a week. This is a floor.

I have a few other goals involving putting stories in the mail, drafting chapters on my novel, etc. But the baseline goal is 1,500 words a day four days a week. It takes twenty-one days to build a habit, according to the behavioral psychologists. For much of the last year, building structured writing habits has been like flogging a donkey. The challenge is to make it into a consistent practice. Like training for the marathons I've run.

Get that word count in. Then go read with the girls, run, socialize, do the day job, whatever.

But in the meantime, I need to feed this inner word count meter in order to be functional in the other areas of my life. Every day that goes by without writing turns into a little whisper in the back of your head: "You so suck."