It's Not the Hard Drive, or the CD Drive...

[Peg Herring]

Yesterday I wrote about computers and how they make writing easier for everyone. At the same time, putting fingers to keyboard or pen to paper is never easy: it's hard to actually begin that novel, sustain that novel, and finish that novel.

When people hear I'm an author, they often say, "I've always wanted to write a book." Some have one started; some just have an idea. But somehow it never gets going. What is it that makes some people want, even need, to finish a project while others just go on dreaming about that Someday when they'll get inspired and write it down?

I don't know. For me, there is no rest from a story until I write it, no forgetting those characters talking in my head. But for many, it's put off for a time when they have more leisure, more focus, less distraction. I don't speak for everyone, but my guess is that if you're waiting for a convenient time to write that novel, you're deluding yourself. The time is now.

[Peg Herring]

There! A Dawg after my own heart. I tend to be at the computer before dawn, too. Evenings I'm only good for editing, and then not for long stretches.

[MysteryDawg]

HIi Peg,

Absolutely true. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and sit at the computer becuase I've had a breakthrough in a scene I have been working on. If I wait until later in the day it is either gone or it doesn't make sense anymore. Sometime when I reread what I have written the next day I wonder what i was thinking.

For me it is a daily ritual. I get up at 5 AM and write for at least an hour with the aim of 1,500 words. There may be a good 300-500 words in that exercise but it is all down on paper.