Contribute A Verse

Who was it that said 80 percent of success is showing up? Woody Allen, I think. Well, I showed up this morning, yesterday afternoon, and once last week. I’m on a roll! For me, showing up means opening my laptop, firing up Scrivener, and writing.

What I notice is that I have to be in it to be in it. That is, I can’t just show up once a week and expect to get any kind of flow. It’s like running. Here I am with the marathon comparisons again. But it’s true. If I just went out once a week and ran 10 miles, I’d never be able to run a marathon. I’d always feel rusty and not quite right. I’d never develop my cardiovascular endurance. I wouldn’t develop fast twitch or slow twitch muscles. And I wouldn’t have the mental toughness it takes to go for hours and hours without stopping.

It’s the same with writing. All kinds of skills come into play when you are writing a novel. Creativity, for sure. But also analysis. Does this scene fit? Would this character really say that? Is that plot line believable? And attention to detail and the painful work of looking at your story with a critical eye and hacking it to bits if that’s what it needs.

It feels good to be writing again. The same way it feels good to be running again after a break. I’m not back in it a hundred percent. I’m not even back in it at Woody Allen’s recommended 80 percent. But I’m back in and I can feel some of the flow returning.

What I notice is that, the more I do it, the more I am in tune with the world around me. The world around me is my inspiration. For example, I was flipping through the latest issue of The Atlantic last week, felling kind of yucked out by their cover story about Israel planning to nuke Iran or whatever it was. Honestly, I couldn’t look at it for long enough to even process it.

But as I flipped, I came across a story about a tennis player who went from first to worst. She started choking in big matches and her career is in the tank. This gave me an idea for my current novel, which is about sports and extreme performance enhancement, and it gave me just the boost I needed to get back into writing. A scene came together in my head almost instantly.

A few days later, I got around to writing it. It might have been better to write it immediately, but I’ve actually got a lot going on that’s draining my energy right now and at the time, I didn’t have it in me. But yesterday and today, I did. It only took two hours to put together three scenes. They’re rough and loose, but that’s what a “shitty first draft” is, after all (thank you, Anne Lamotte for giving me what is my absolute favorite writing phrase).

I’m a little concerned that my characters aren’t talking to me yet. I remember that during writing The Blind Pig, I knew them all so well. But if I think about it, I didn’t know them in my first draft. My two main characters actually didn’t exist in my first draft.

I’m still feeling my way. It’s funny, because I’m kind of a planner. People think of me as structured and organized and reliable. I’m this way with work-work — the kind where the actual making of money is involved — because if I don’t keep myself in a box, everything will fall apart. But when it comes to novel writing — where the making of money is a pipe dream — I get to be myself. I get to just let it flow.

It’s such a great feeling to write for an hour or so. I’ve got to find time to do it every day. The same way I find time to run almost every day. Rain or shine. All I have to do is show up. The rest will follow.