My Ideal Writing Life

"What I've learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head."
- Anne Lammot, Bird By Bird

My ideal writing life may not start off quite like you would think because unlike most would-be writers, I don't want to sleep in past noon every day. Instead, I would wake up around 4:30 or so because that is my favorite time to wake up and it makes my days feel very long and fruitful. Next, I would eat breakfast, grab a can of Sunkist and flip open my laptop. I would have several new music releases queued to listen to on my iTunes and prepare reviews for as one of the reviewers for the music magazine Q. Once I finished preparing first drafts of those reviews, I would maybe go for a run, play some music and then get back to work, only this time I'd be posting a blog entry for my fans (or detractors) to read. At around 3pm or so, I would get ready to rehearse with my band and when I got home that night I would be prepared to work on my latest book (by now I'd have released several, which is why I got hired by Q Magazine in the first place.

That dream couldn't be further from my reach than it is right now (which isn't true because it was probably a lot further from my reach back when I couldn't read or write). The reason I selected the quote I did from chapter one is because it really boils all my writing problems down to one key statement. I always over-criticize my work until it is no longer enjoyable to read. I second-guess every adjective, over-think every piece of symbolism. If I could estimate how many starts to a story I have deleted because "it just sucked" then I would say I would have enough pages to write the next great american novel (although the continuity would be a problem). I actually do wake up at 4am almost every day so I don't foresee having too much trouble finding time to write (in fact, my desire to write more is why I decided to wake up so early). Thanks to this class, I vow to fight back against my inner critic... or maybe just let him catch a few more hours of sleep while I write in the morning. :)