When I write I do it almost subconsciously.
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Rarely do I ever sit down at my computer and think about what I am going to write. Usually, I am going online to check my email or scroll through Pinterest, and while I am there I get an idea and I will jot it down on a blank document.
Fast-forward an hour and I have two pages written and never responded to the email that I was supposed to be writing. I have always struggled with creating a designated writing time.
Many authors swear by their rigorous writing rituals.
On Writing by Stephen King has been an influential book for my writing career and I would seriously recommend it to anyone who wants to write anything. In that book, Stephen King writes about his schedule when he writes and it is the same every day. For years he has been doing the same thing every day, and clearly, it has worked out for him.
After I read that book I decided I needed to make a schedule like his and that would be how I improved as a writer. I made a very easy schedule that made me write for an hour three times a day.
It was nothing crazy but I stuck to it for about two days and then found myself not wanting to write. I was dumbfounded that I lost my desire to write just because I told myself I had to. I got discouraged because I began to wonder if I truly wanted to be a writer. What kind of writer would I become if I had no control over when I wrote?
Frequently in my free time, I would look up quotes about writing and how authors came to success. Well, I came across a quote and it just about brought me to my quitting point.
“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” -Louis L’Amour.
I taped that quote to my desk and I looked at it every time I would start to write, and I knew it was true. I struggled to start writing and I thought I failed because I knew once I got into a writing groove then I would be able to keep going but those first few sentences were a barrier I couldn’t get over.
It wasn’t until almost a year later that I figured out why I couldn’t get the writing juices flowing.
I am the type of person who gets an idea or a picture in my head and I will do anything to fit myself into that picture. For example, if you Google image search “writers writing” then you will see great authors like Arthur Miller or Stephen King, sitting at their desk writing something that will inspire people like me to write. I aspired to sit at my desk and be pictured like they are.
When I would sit down at my desk with my laptop, notebook, and dictionary open I expected to be able to write profound things and look like an author while I did it. I never wrote anything productive from sitting behind that desk at noon when the entire world was awake.
I aspired to copy the great authors of our times.
I tried writing behind a desk like Ernest Hemmingway and I tried standing while writing like Charles Dickens. I wanted to feel connected to the authors I loved and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writing habits were off the table (I don’t drink).
I looked back at the times that I wrote a lot or I wrote something that I actually liked and all those instances had one thing in common.
So instead of writing like Dickens, Hugo, or Fitzgerald, I realized I write in the same place as Mark Twain, in the comforts of my own bed.
I write the best when I am under my blankets, at night with either no light or a small bedside lamp. If my bed is not easily accessible then my next favorite spot is anywhere in nature. Two very different places but that’s where the juices flow.
So I may not look like a high and mighty writer who sits behind a big oak desk and has papers and books surrounding me, but I am a writer in my own way at midnight as I type ferociously on my laptop or write in a small notebook on the steps of old buildings. Not all writers are the same and writing does not look the same for everyone.