How Bad Do You Want It, Baby?
No, I'm not talking about sex. We'll blog about that another day, okay? I am talking about wanting to be a writer. Or, even more, wanting to be a writer for whom writing pays all the bills. A full-time writer.
I know every unpubbed writer wants to get his or her foot in the door. I know every writer who's sold one book wants to sell more. And so it goes. But how bad do you want it?
It isn't a secret that silence is pretty hard to come by around this place. My alarm goes out at (gulp!) 5:30 a.m. The ONLY way I can function at that hour is by mainlining coffee into an I.V. line directly into my jugular--or something pretty close to that. I get up at that sick, sick, SICK hour NOT because I am a morning person. I can assure you I am not. I get up at that hour because silence around this nut house is exceedingly hard to come by. Four kids. One of me. Numerous pets. Do the math. I write for a short time, answer all my emails, fan mail, blog and so on.
By 7:00 a.m. the baby is up and he wants oatmeal. NOW! By eight, three kids have made the bus (hopefully), and I have overseen a morning operation akin to the landing at Normandy.
By 8:30, I am writing again. I usually have music on, and it's usually Beethoven or Vivaldi, but if I'm tired, it's something rockin' so I can stay awake. I'll spare you the boring details, but suffice it to say a toddler, dog, doorbell, phone, fax, agent, editor, etc. all conspire to keep me really busy. By two, the Monsters are coming home from school. Homework. Usually--on a good day--at LEAST four to six EXTRA kids float through here. Once I had--count 'em--ELEVEN extra children in my house. NOT including mine.
OK, then there's music lessons, dinner . . . by seven-thirty p.m., I am so exhausted I want to shoot myself. Because I have Crohn's disease, it's a 50-50 dice roll that by then, I have a low-grade temperature hovering between 100 and 101. My glands are swollen, I may have my head in the toilet. AND THEN, I start writing AGAIN. Because it's only then the toddler is in bed for the night and I can start maybe putting sentences together again.
Tomorrow, my alarm will ring again. Early. Coffee will brew, and I will start this insane shit all over again. And why do I do it?
Because when I finally DO have an hour of silence and a cup of coffeee and my file opened to my shiny new novel idea, I still, all these years later, feel like a kid at Christmas. I get to do this for a living and it ain't old yet.
But just so no one gets the idea that it's all bon-bons and fuzzy slippers . . . it's a grind most days. And you have to want it. Bad. You have to give up sleep, sex, food, whatever. Cut stuff out of your life until you have room for this. Give up x to gain y. Ten minutes. An hour. You have to write every day and JUST DO IT.
How bad do you want it?
I know every unpubbed writer wants to get his or her foot in the door. I know every writer who's sold one book wants to sell more. And so it goes. But how bad do you want it?
It isn't a secret that silence is pretty hard to come by around this place. My alarm goes out at (gulp!) 5:30 a.m. The ONLY way I can function at that hour is by mainlining coffee into an I.V. line directly into my jugular--or something pretty close to that. I get up at that sick, sick, SICK hour NOT because I am a morning person. I can assure you I am not. I get up at that hour because silence around this nut house is exceedingly hard to come by. Four kids. One of me. Numerous pets. Do the math. I write for a short time, answer all my emails, fan mail, blog and so on.
By 7:00 a.m. the baby is up and he wants oatmeal. NOW! By eight, three kids have made the bus (hopefully), and I have overseen a morning operation akin to the landing at Normandy.
By 8:30, I am writing again. I usually have music on, and it's usually Beethoven or Vivaldi, but if I'm tired, it's something rockin' so I can stay awake. I'll spare you the boring details, but suffice it to say a toddler, dog, doorbell, phone, fax, agent, editor, etc. all conspire to keep me really busy. By two, the Monsters are coming home from school. Homework. Usually--on a good day--at LEAST four to six EXTRA kids float through here. Once I had--count 'em--ELEVEN extra children in my house. NOT including mine.
OK, then there's music lessons, dinner . . . by seven-thirty p.m., I am so exhausted I want to shoot myself. Because I have Crohn's disease, it's a 50-50 dice roll that by then, I have a low-grade temperature hovering between 100 and 101. My glands are swollen, I may have my head in the toilet. AND THEN, I start writing AGAIN. Because it's only then the toddler is in bed for the night and I can start maybe putting sentences together again.
Tomorrow, my alarm will ring again. Early. Coffee will brew, and I will start this insane shit all over again. And why do I do it?
Because when I finally DO have an hour of silence and a cup of coffeee and my file opened to my shiny new novel idea, I still, all these years later, feel like a kid at Christmas. I get to do this for a living and it ain't old yet.
But just so no one gets the idea that it's all bon-bons and fuzzy slippers . . . it's a grind most days. And you have to want it. Bad. You have to give up sleep, sex, food, whatever. Cut stuff out of your life until you have room for this. Give up x to gain y. Ten minutes. An hour. You have to write every day and JUST DO IT.
How bad do you want it?
posted by Erica Orloff at 7:10 AM
14 Comments:
No doubt! That's what it comes down to, isn't it? I've had a number of those days recently, with copyedits (ugh), editor problems with the current manuscript resulting in many changes, kids and visiting family and...whoa...just made myself dizzy there! :)
(by the by, Erica, my blog link has changed to http://www.heatherbrewer.com/bleedingink)
Hi heather:
I have those days. All the time.:-)
Changed the blog link--THANKS!!!!
(Love your redesign, too!).
E
{{{Erica}}} -- wow. When do you relax and put your feet up? Watch some TV? Have a little mom-only time?
My schedule isn't as hectic as yours because I have a nice, solid, eight hours where I'm sitting on my butt staring at the computer. Being at the Day Job is actually extremely peaceful. It's the mornings before the DJ and when I come home at night that's like a cyclone.
But in between -- aaaahhh... I tell my co-workers that I go to work to relax. Hehe...
Sometimes, when I'm staying late on a Friday night, someone comes up to my desk and asks me what I'm still doing there. To wit, I always jokingly reply, "Why would I want to go home? My kids are there!"
Only I'm not really joking. I'm serious. Okay, I'm half-joking. But man! Those kids do wear you out, don't they?
karm:
They are soul-sucking ghouls.
I love 'em. I would like to have two more (adopt, actually) . . . I want to be a foster mom. I want to surround myself with them and enjoy them. BUT yeah, they suck the life out of me some days. Of course, other days, they PROVIDE the joy, so . . . it balances out somehow. Sort of.
Mom-only time are things I fight to carve out for myself. Tonight I am playing poker. I have my writers' group. My writer's group is sacred! I would have to be en route to the hospital in an ambulance (knock wood) to miss it, and even then, I'd try to take the conference call. LOL!
E
My goal for today is fifteen pages.
If a rocket scientist with four soul-sucking ghouls underfoot can do it, then, by golly, so can I. :)
Sheesh! I was so exhausted after reading about your day, I had to make myself another coffee and sit down. I'm not being facetious, honest.
Much as I can write in chaos, it flows much better after that blessed bus comes along and gathers the soul-sucking ghouls and carts them off to school. Don't know how you do it with the little guy under foot. Not to mention frequent bouts of being under the weather. An inner core stronger than most, I'd think.
How badly do I want it, baby? Hmm I gave up my 9-5 in the real world and now work at home...for my freakin' husband! Is that bad enough? Joking...mostly. I'm fortunate to be able to set my own schedule. 'The job' only takes 20-25 hours a week, which leaves plenty of writing time. And, I get rather a kick out of making professional type phone calls while my hair stands on end and I'm dressed in boxers and a tank top!
p.s I got tagged for a book meme on my blog and I gave you an honorable mention ;P
Jude:
LOL! You made my day with that comment. :-)
E
Lainey:
I actually have to apologize, or comment here . . . I didn't write the blog to go "ta-da . . . look what I manage to do with soul-sucking ghouls and illness and coffee" (not that I think you or anyone took it quite that way). It's just I really wanted to say somehow that the illusion that we can have it all without sacrifice is an illusion. You have to give up something. Sometimes. Maybe not every day, but sometimes. And if you want to be a writer bad enough--"you" meaning all of us--then you sometimes do without sleep or a sit-down meal or whatever.
That said, believe me I am so damn lucky. I, too, get a total kick out of blogging with my hair still slept-in, as my teen puts it--"80s and BIG hair" after bed, and a T-shirt and barefoot. :-)
I am going to go check out your blog right now!
E
well, I'm working towards it, no matter how (cough) hard it is. It has to be better than sitting in a cube farm with multiple computers on and under my desk competing for attention.
I would love to turn in my geek badge for a writer's. Your mornings and evenings sound a heck-of-a-lot like mine already, so I don't think it would be too hard of a stretch :)
Hi Ewoh:
Cube farm. Love it. LOL!
Actually, I should probably blog (ding, ding . . . idea!) about what motivates. For me . . . it's that threat of a cube farm and giving up the freedom to drink coffee and punish myself as a writer. LOL!
E
What a thought provoking post. I say I want it bad.... but get easily distracted. I'm at the pc all day, on and off, and somehow books get written... it amazes me sometimes, it's like the fairies come in and do a bit for me.
You know what they say, Erica, if you want something doing give it to a busy person.... I think what you do is amazing, but I bet you wouldn't get any more written (if as much) if you had all the time in the world to do it with no kids around.
Btw - I'm such a morning person it's not funny. I used to drive my bf bonkers when we went on holiday together - I'd be forbidden to talk or sing until a certain hour....
Sara:
I totally agree with you. It's like, in a company, the more competent you are, the bigger star in the corporate world, the more shit gets piled on your plate. I know when I DID have more silence (like when I had three in school and was preggers with the last one, so I had maybe 7 hours a day to write), I didn't write any more. There is an element, to every writer I think, of daydreaming and imagining, and that intrudes on actual output (or at least that's what I tell myself!).
E
I agree wholeheartedly with that, Erica. For a writer, the thinking, imagining stage is crucial. While the rest of the world probably thinks we're space cadets sometimes, we're really thinking about what our protag is going to do next, how to get him/her out of that impossible jam, etc. A writer's work is never done. Even when we're asleep at night, dreaming, our minds are processing what eventually might find its way to the page.
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