On Writing

Don’t.

Especially if it’s before 6 am on a Saturday morning and your schedule for the day includes cleaning carpets, fortifying your domicile, food shopping and cooking dinner.

And especially if you are: tired, uninspired, suffering from the long-term effects of illness and would much rather be spending your time engaged in some mindless, emotionally satisfying pursuit, like looking at spaceship model kits online.

Of course following this advice is no guarantee that you won’t end up writing anyway, as ought to be evident by now.

Screw you, Bob Heinlein! You and your “always write” advice.  What the hell did you know about blogs?

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2 Comments

  1. Nope. Absolutely not true. Why, some of the best writers I know have to drink themselves into a stupor before they can face the typer.

    Actually, that’s not true. Some of the best writers I know don’t write.

  2. Ha.
    You know damned well you won’t take your own advice.
    The deadlines may be self-imposed, as in blogs, or imposed by a publisher, but you know you are going to meet them.

    To newbies: If you want to be a professional writer, you will completely avoid Steve’s advice in this particular column–‘cos you know he didn’t really mean it. You will write when you’re tired, when you can’t think of a damned thing to put on paper–even e-paper–when you’re sick, when you’ve got to get the kids off to school, fed or to bed. An amateur says “I’ll do it later when I have more time, when I feel better, when I have an idea, when… when….”

    Pros, like Steve or–name your absolute FAVOURITE pro–whomever, write. Because that’s what you do.

    I say again, “Ha!”

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