It's Not All About the Muse

I'm going to share a dirty little secret about writing: sometimes it's really boring. Those of you who write regularly know what I'm talking about. New or aspiring writers sometimes think writing is all about inspiration and being in "the zone." Personally, I love those days when I am in the zone. That's the place where hours disappear and you don't even realize it. Where the words just come to you. Where you thank God for your ability to write.

But that state is more the exception than the rule. And learning to work through the dull times is what turns you into a seasoned writer.

Today was a case in point. I came back from my appointments this afternoon and got to work. I first dove in on my chapter on the neurophysiology of trauma. Since so much new research has come out, I was nervous about working on it. I was afraid that I would have to completely dismantle the original chapter. But to my surprise, the chapter from the 1st edition actually held up quite well. There was lots of material I needed to add (and will still need to add), but the original structure was solid.

After finishing my initial pass through that chapter, I worked the rest of the afternoon, and into the evening, on formatting two chapters from the original rft format and making sure my references were all in EndNote. There are a lot of references so this process took a long time.

"References? Surely that doesn't count as writing!" I would argue that it is. Working on the "housekeeping" items of writing still moves you towards your goal, and it's great work to do on those days when you are less than inspired. True, it might be good to hire that task out to someone. But I think we sometimes lose sight of the ability of a mindless task to get things going. Obviously, you can't finish an entire project by working on nothing but references. But I find that attending to the housekeeping items can be enough to start that flow of creativity.

And once that happens, look out world. :-)

Signing off for now.