Comments on: Leading a Double Life: Professional vs. Creative Success

By: gordon

gordon — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 01:02:57 +0000

Really great comments. Thanks everyone. Lots of stuff to think about and apply in the daily output/struggle.

Thanks.

By: Armand

Armand — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 04:39:11 +0000

wow- some great comments on this one. I really enjoyed reading them.

Armand

By: Todd

Todd — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 00:01:22 +0000

A difficult thing to do is swinging away from the analytical mode and into what Robert Olen Butler calls “dreamspace,” the sort of meditative spot to make the writing a vivid dream. Sometimes, day to day, you don’t get through to that state and you just write through it. I’m not as strong an advocate of writing every day as Butler is. I really think sometimes the mind needs a break. When I’ve worked on my novel, I set aside three days a week, usually Saturday, Sunday an Monday, and wrote a couple of hours a day, or tried to, and set a minimum word goal. At the moment, as I’m letting the book cool after the second rewrite, I’ve tried to write just a little bit at least every day, and have alternated between nonfiction (blogging mostly) and fiction exercises. And sometimes just thinking about writing helps. Just keep writing. Struggle with it. Set it aside if you have to (but not too long).

By: Edweard

Edweard — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:58:39 +0000

Repeatedly, writers report that they reach a wall in their project when the idea doesn’t seem fresh and they want to quit. It is at that point that they rely on their professionalism to get the job done, knowing from experience that a) what they write isn’t really as bad as they think, and b) the consequences of failure are worse.

There’s a quote about a NY playwright that I have squirreled away somewhere, in which a friend observes that she was able to get the job done with whatever resources were at hand. The final result wasn’t what she expected; and it may not have all the bells and whistles that she wanted, but the important thing was realize: the job was finished, and she could go on. As it turns out, the article was an obituary for her, since she wasn’t able to go on, due to dying.

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:22:12 +0000

I support my family by working a 9-5 software job. For me, it’s pointless to think in terms of ‘new ideas.’ Ideas will always come, we just need to be there to catch them. The struggle is learning how to make writing as habitual as our day jobs, learning how to sit down and type regardless if we think we have anything to say, regardless of how we feel. We need to show up when we’re feeling like crap, show up when we’re so tired our hands ache. And a ‘pro’ is the writer who welcomes seemingly impassable problems, like no beginning. A ‘pro’ stays in their chair until the problem is no longer a problem. Readers will sense a writer writing working through something difficult. And most the effort will result in better writing. We grow as writers when we write the impossible.