Writer’s Guilt

Here’s the stock advice for a long and happy career:  write every day.  If you write every day, even a little bit, you’ll end up with a lot.  Some of the most prolific writers of our time have written only one page a day.  Others, just three.  Phillip Roth mentioned that a good day for him was five.  It adds up over time.  In this way, writers are not unlike obese people:  it’s not the binge eater that gets grossly overweight; it’s the slow and steady snacker of Snickers, Oreos and KFC.  Those people get mega-behemoth.

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With this Detective Novel, I was well on my way to splendid, shimmering fatness.  On good days, I was writing seven double spaced pages a day; on bad days, just two.  But I was writing every day no matter what.  It was wonderful to feel my belly of writing extend and form into a pot you could cup in your hand.  The budding breasts, the double chin, the incipient stretch marks—those were all things I desired for my body of work:  my corpus.  Every day, in every way, I’m getting fatter:  this was my mantra.

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Then Memorial Day happened.  And I was determined to be good:  I wrote that day before the barbecue.  But after that meal…I slid down hill.  I gave myself the next day off.  Everybody deserves the day after Memorial Day off, right?  I used that day for movie watching and leftovers.

Then, I gave myself Wednesday off.  After all, Wednesday is still part of the Memorial Day Weekend.  I used that day for movie watching and leftovers.

And Thursday, I realized that I was at a crossroads:  I could stop the insanity and start writing and possibly end up with a big fat book.  Or I could continue down this other path, with a big fat stomach.  Guess what route I chose?

6 thoughts on “Writer’s Guilt

  1. Khanh – You’re most emphatically not the only writer who takes a few days off. I don’t think really that it’s entirely a bad thing to do that actually. For one thing, it does give you a breather so your creativity can flow a bit. For another, I think writers need to take their writing seriously, but we also need to play. That doesn’t mean goof off whenever you feel like it but to me, it means don’t berate yourself for the few days you’ve skipped. It’s easy. Just sit down now and start wrting again. Your manny hasn’t gone anywhere. One day at a time, if you know what I mean.

    • Thanks for the words of encouragement, Margot. Writing is all about getting back on the saddle and what-not. The other night I had a fantastic dinner with some writer friends and we read stuff to each other. It was a fun, non-competitive romp…that really got my juices fired!

  2. A few days is okay. Everyone needs a greak. Now git back on that horse! Actually, start with your last few para’s and edit it. It gets you into the swing. Remember, real writers ship. A big fat book is much better than a big fat butt. And I’m waiting to read this book…

    • What a great suggestion! I’ll totally try to tinker with stuff I’ve written recently. I usually try to avoid that…but it might just do the trick!

  3. I am half-assedly indulging in gluten-free writing. It’s left me with thinner pages and a constant pang of hunger for fat words and freshly baked prose. Time to return to the real thing.

    • Gluten-free is a fad. Gluten-free writing, faddier. Writers are omnivores. We are fierce pac men working our way through a maze of edible bits one bit at a time.

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