Natalie Goldberg, Redux - Julie

Here are the things I do everyday: Drink coffee, blow dry my hair, dress myself, go to work, read email, read blogs that have no bearing on my life, eat at least three meals, feed my son and our pets and occasionally my husband, unload and/or load the dishwasher, consider and then dismiss doing yardwork, worry about work, watch TV, brush my teeth, go to sleep.

Here’s what I don’t do everyday: Write.

I see a couple of places where I could make a change.

Every single book about writing tells you to write everyday – the ones I like as well as the ones I don’t like, they all say it very clearly, write everyday. And I get it, that way you can factor in the crap that will surely come on days you really aren’t in the mood. It will take the pressure off, to always come up with something of quality. If you just force yourself to write everyday, something good and real and unexpected will eventually surface. But I’ve been using the one-writing-session-a-week method, the afternoon before writing group meets. And it’s killing me. Hunched over my computer, writing with a thin layer of sweat on my forehead, consistently typing “hte” instead of “the” in my frenzy to have something respectable to bring. My writing group friends would read any schlock I bring, treat it well, give it its due, but, as we have established in a previous blog, I write to get attention, and I’m not like the bad boy in your 2nd grade class, I do care what kind of attention it is. So I bring in pages that are the result of much brow-furrowing and angst and word-smithery, but the writing still never feels right.

So I guess what I’m saying is this. Natalie Goldberg, I’m sorry, you were right. Turns out it if you really are a writer, it is about practicing regularly, filling up notebooks, even if it means saying no to Grey’s Anatomy.