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Last week I bragged about my garden.  I’m not so much proud of the size and potential harvest bounty, but the weed freeness of the place.  Hold on to your britches I’m about to drop some truth on y’all.   Ready? I’m not known for consistency or self discipline.

I’ll wait while you recover from the shock.

I typically lose interest when the first rain brings forth gazillions of weedlings to carpet the plot. Yes, I mean gazillions!  By this point in the summer, it’s a small jungle out there.  They got water when needed, insecticides if the grasshoppers or tomato worms were bad. Other than that, it was every man….plant for himself.  However, this year I’ve found a meditation of sorts in making a pass through the garden with the cats and a hoe a daily ritual.  And the results are in; daily tending keeps it clean.

All of that to admit I FINALLY get what the “real” writers have said. Write EVERY DAY!

Since we started this adventure,  I’ve collected these little mantras and bits of advice and tucked them away in folders and journals, but never TRULY embraced the truth of writing every day.  There have been spurts, but never consistently and why Eden’s Fall has taken five years to complete.  Oh, sure I can blame distance, the coordinating of three writers in different time zones, two kids graduating high school and going off to college, the loss of our dear Keith, illness, surgeries, broken bones. BUT, the reason is singular.  I CHOSE not to write every single day. Period.

I was waiting for the mystical creature, Muse, to inspire me. I was waiting for a quiet house or empty house. (Gregg is sitting across from me now. I CAN write with someone in the room using the same air.) I was waiting for the perfect rainy day — in the Texas Panhandle — who was I kidding?

There are some coaches, editors, and writers who call this plain old laziness. And they aren’t wrong.  It’s also procrastination, and that is plain old fear.  Fear of success. Fear of failure. Fear of judgment.

Guess what?  We are being judged whether we write a book or not.  Yesterday, friend of this blog, artist and blogger, Sally In The Haven, wrote about feeling uninspired — The palest ink is better than the best memory.’ Chinese Proverb. — and being determined to “soldier on” through her doldrums.  SO she doesn’t look up and it’s been months or years since she touched a sketch book and pencil. THAT is an artist. THAT is what we as writers have to embrace.  THAT is what this writer is committing to.

Just like my garden, our lives, professions, relationships, laundry, health – our stories and our craft need daily attention.  Only took me forty-*cough* years to figure this out.  Implementation….well let’s not get too excited here Skippy.

 

Do you procrastinate?  How do you power through and not leave the proverbial blank page?