Fiction Freak: Get Your Debut On
There are two different reactions to telling someone you write for a living. They are:
1) Wow. I'd love to sit at home all day and get paid to make stuff up.
2) OMG. That's amazing. How do you DO that? I can't even write two pages!!
The truth is somewhere in between, nestled snugly between the impossible and the improbable. Yes, it is incredibly hard to put word after word in a sensible, aesthetically pleasing manner over 60,000 times (or over 100,00 times, depending on your word count). But I have to admit that I totally have days where I sit down in front of the laptop and say to myself, "Dude. You get paid to tell stories about things that never happened to people that don't exist. That is soooo cool."
But - I have to actually sit down and DO IT first.
Welcome to every writer's worst enemy - themselves.
Procrastination is the the monster under my bed, and he's got nasty sharp teeth. Actually that's a lie - those teeth aren't sharp at all. They're very small and have rounded edges. They don't slash into me, they grind me down over the course of the day and tell me I need to do the dishes, mow the yard, take a shower (Ok, that one is important), read, watch TV or (gasp) take a nap. Those teeth wear at my motivation and tell me it's OK, I can add to the word count tomorrow when the dishes are done and yard is mowed and I don't smell bad anymore.
And I can, technically. But what about that little spark of motivation that is unique to today? The one that might fire a scene in my pantster brain that won't have a chance to exist tomorrow, because tomorrow's spark of motivation is it's own individual flame, one that wants to do something else entirely and completely neglects yesterday's inspiration?
I remind myself of this every time I think about that nap - even if it's well-deserved. My non-events happening to people that don't exist might ACTUALLY never happen if I don't make use of the synapse that is firing today, right now, in this moment. I'm not perfect - I cave to the temptation of my nap, or a longer shower than usual fairly often. And there's a little scene that dies every time I do.
So yes, there is that space in between the amazingly easy job of getting paid to write, and the impossible task of ACTUALLY doing it. I reside somewhere in there, dodging some responsibilities while accepting others, and performing CPR on yesterday's ideas when I indulge myself in a little procrastination.