Writers Digest posted their cover story interview with Laurell K. Hamilton online. I read it as soon as I heard about it on Laurell K. Hamilton’s blog. It’s obviously an interview focused on the writing process and much of what she says in the interview she has already said in so many words in other interviews or on her blog, nevertheless, her continual advice is very sensible and bears repeating:
Writers write. Put your butt in the chair and write on a regular basis.
I find her blog (as well as Neil Gaiman’s Journal) a continual reminder that writing just doesn’t happen magically (regardless of how much we may desire to believe it). Short stories, novellas, and novels do not spring forth out of thin air nor are they deposited onto your computer by benevolent elves, in short, you have to work. And though I dream of writing, the advice I continually get from Ms. Hamilton and Mr. Gaiman, in addition to hearing them complain about the agony that they go through to get to a “place” where the writing is flowing, makes me realize that I’m quite comfortable with dreaming of writing, right now. It is probably my recent brush with academia that makes me all too happy to go home after work and read what others have written and watch what others have filmed and enacted. The mere idea of sitting in front of a computer screen for five consecutive days attempting to squeeze out four pages (LKH’s current page quota) of writing that works, of writing that you’re proud of, makes me want to run away screaming from a computer and hide under the bed. And, I think that’s fine. I’ve learned something about myself and where I am in my life, right now.
Thus, I would wholeheartedly encourage all those persons who want to be writers, who dream of writing, who desire to one day see their names across the covers of books, to read these two blogs. It will disillusion you about the “magic” of the writing and publishing process. It’ll strip away your fantasies and show the hard work required for the dream to become a realization. After you know the reality, you can make a decision to write, to not write, to write for fun and only when it suits you, to write your heart out regardless of your mood. At least you’ll know what lies ahead and that the pages really don’t come any easier regardless of how long you’ve been writing.
I kind of imagine writing as a kind of haunting. When you have an assignment and you are under deadline, it’s always there. It’s eating away at you. Why are you sleeping when you could be finishing your writing? Why are you eating when you could be working on your writing? Why are you lazing about on the sofa on a Saturday afternoon when you could be doing pages? These are the kinds of questions that follow me around when I have writing assignments. I’ve yet to be able to compartmentalize writing from the rest of my life. So, right now, it makes me happier not to write. A burden has been lifted. Yet, someday, I think it won’t be the burden that it is right now and that is a comforting thought.
