Monday, July 31, 2006
Sit, Ubu, Sit!
On Monday nights, I host an Internet radio show called "The World of Publishing." At the end of every show, I ask my guest what advice he or she has for writers.
It occurred to me (I'm on vacation this week, so have a little more time to think) that I rarely ask myself the question and give my own advice to people. So here it is (drum roll, please):
KEEP YOUR DERRIERE IN THE CHAIR.
It's really that simple, but it didn't come across to me in quite that way until I went on a writing residency this past spring to a place where there is no electricity. I brought a small manual typewriter with me, not knowing what the results would be.
The results were phenomenal. In two weeks I got 250 pages of decent material. And I have to say that had I been using my beloved PowerBook and being connected to the Internet, as I am 24/7, that wouldn't have happened.
Why? Because research is just so incredibly easy. One writes, and then one thinks, oh, what year did that happen? And one looks it up. Then and there.
Completely destroying the flow of the writing in the process.
Writing with a typewriter was oddly freeing. When I came to a point where I would normally have looked something up, I just typed in three exes and kept going. Research? Never mind! Looking things up? Pshaw! I wrote and wrote and wrote. Which was, after all, the point of being on a writing residency.
There are a lot of reasons not to write when we're working on a novel, an article, an essay, or anything else that requires hard work -- as good writing necessarily does. The first is, obviously, that it is in fact hard. Having a difficult task in front of us is an open invitation to sloth and procrastination.
Getting out of the chair to do "one more thing," to look up a reference, even to get just "one more" coffee, means that the work isn't getting done. It's that simple.
And getting out of the chair doesn't have to be physical. Reading emails as they come in, taking time to look something up on the Net, reading "just one" newsgroup or forum entry -- all this is getting you out of your chair just as much as is the coffee or the book or anything else.
So that's my advice: you want to write? Write. Don't talk about it. Don't think about it. Don't spend all your time in writing forums and on writing email lists and reading about writing: Write. Keep your derrière in the chair, and write.
And then you'll be way beyond the elements of style!
***
Jeannette Cézanne
Customline Wordware: Custom Copy To Go!
www.customline.com
It occurred to me (I'm on vacation this week, so have a little more time to think) that I rarely ask myself the question and give my own advice to people. So here it is (drum roll, please):
KEEP YOUR DERRIERE IN THE CHAIR.
It's really that simple, but it didn't come across to me in quite that way until I went on a writing residency this past spring to a place where there is no electricity. I brought a small manual typewriter with me, not knowing what the results would be.
The results were phenomenal. In two weeks I got 250 pages of decent material. And I have to say that had I been using my beloved PowerBook and being connected to the Internet, as I am 24/7, that wouldn't have happened.
Why? Because research is just so incredibly easy. One writes, and then one thinks, oh, what year did that happen? And one looks it up. Then and there.
Completely destroying the flow of the writing in the process.
Writing with a typewriter was oddly freeing. When I came to a point where I would normally have looked something up, I just typed in three exes and kept going. Research? Never mind! Looking things up? Pshaw! I wrote and wrote and wrote. Which was, after all, the point of being on a writing residency.
There are a lot of reasons not to write when we're working on a novel, an article, an essay, or anything else that requires hard work -- as good writing necessarily does. The first is, obviously, that it is in fact hard. Having a difficult task in front of us is an open invitation to sloth and procrastination.
Getting out of the chair to do "one more thing," to look up a reference, even to get just "one more" coffee, means that the work isn't getting done. It's that simple.
And getting out of the chair doesn't have to be physical. Reading emails as they come in, taking time to look something up on the Net, reading "just one" newsgroup or forum entry -- all this is getting you out of your chair just as much as is the coffee or the book or anything else.
So that's my advice: you want to write? Write. Don't talk about it. Don't think about it. Don't spend all your time in writing forums and on writing email lists and reading about writing: Write. Keep your derrière in the chair, and write.
And then you'll be way beyond the elements of style!
***
Jeannette Cézanne
Customline Wordware: Custom Copy To Go!
www.customline.com
