What do writers do when their magic idea fairy disappears?
Wouldn’t it be great if there were an idea fairy? She would just waft in and whack you on the head with her sparkly wand, and wham, you’d get the idea you need—whether you’re starting a piece of writing, stuck in the middle of something, or trying to wrangle something to a close. She’d be like Tinkerbell, but without the sassy outfit; she’d wear something more Brooklyn DIY funky, I think, and her wand-tip would be old typewriter keys.
Yeah. Except she doesn’t exist—or maybe the beeyatch is on strike, kicking up her magical heels with the fun fairy folk at Disney or something.
The scariest part of writing is getting started
Instead, unfortunately, we have to create our own idea fairy, every single damn time we sit down to write. And that’s why, as Stephen King said in his book On Writing, that the scariest moment is just before you start. Because what if this time, it doesn’t happen—the idea, the phrase, the “so what?” What if you can’t find the thread of what you were working on yesterday, last week, last night?
There is no guarantee that you’re going to find that thread, it’s true. But when you start taking yourself seriously as a writer (itself a scary prospect), you have to keep looking. Every day, no matter who is sick home from school or the report you’re doing for work or the papers you have to grade or the laundry piled around your knees…Every day, even if it’s only for thirty minutes. You have to put your butt in the chair and write. It’s boring advice, yet, ultimately, it’s the most important. Because if you’re not in the chair writing, then there isn’t a writer’s handbook in the world that can help you.
It would be delightful, wouldn’t it, if all of us had what Virginia Woolf wished for decades ago: rooms of our own in which to mull and ponder. Alas, if you are anything like me, your “room” is a desk in the living room or maybe it’s near the kitchen or in the bedroom or maybe it’s just a pile of papers on the floor near the couch.
You Have Lipstick on Your Teeth: and other things you’ll hear only from your friends in the powder room
Get your butt in the chair and get yourself on the grid because it’s a prize week! Thanks to the cross-promotion of yeah write and the anthology You Have Lipstick on Your Teeth, the eligible yeah write jury prize winner and crowd favorite will get a copy of the Lipstick anthology, which contains an essay of mine, Deb Quinn, and, boy, do I feel lucky to be able to ride on the coattails of the other writers. Their essays, some of the funniest ever, are about everything from masturbating grandmas to perimenopause to breastfeeding, but you know which habit all the writers share?
They put their butts in the chair and write.
How and where you find the time to write in comments…
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Editor’s note from Erica M: Also part of the prize package and Deb’s generous offer are the classic writing books Stephen King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird.
Prize week eligibility
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- Challenge grid must reach 30 or more entries on the grid; no prizes will be awarded at 29 entries or fewer
- Jury prize winner must be a current yeah write subscriber as of the end of this week’s voting period
- Crowd favorite winner must be a current yeah write subscriber as of the end of this week’s voting period
- Open to U. S., Canada and international residents willing to supply yeah write editors their postal addresses for shipping
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The speakeasy is back from summer hiatus
Now that summer is over, the speakeasy is back in business. If you’re a poet or a fiction writer, there is a challenge grid just for you. Please head on over and check it out. If you have the inclination, you can participate on both grids, however please be sure you’ll have the time to read all of the entries and vote responsibly.
Odds, ends, reminders
- This immediate past Sunday is the earliest your submission can be dated
- Your post can be no longer than 600 words
- Personal essays or traditional blog anecdotes only
- There are no weekly prompts; the topic is yours. Be compelling
- The grid is open from Tuesday at 12:01 a.m. to Wednesday at 11:59 p.m.
- There is voting. Voting will take place Thursday from midnight to 10:00 p.m. US eastern
- The challenge grid is limited to 50 bloggers
- The winners’ post will be published by noon on Friday
- No self-promotional posts are allowed on the yeah write grid, including those containing links to other blog events and Internet contests
Welcome to the 2013 fall writing season at yeah write weekly writing challenge
Yeah write #127 is open. Bring us your best stuff.
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Deb – I took a writing class last winter and she made us write only on paper lunchsacks with a sharpie every day for 39 days. Just to show us we didn’t need that special pen, that pumpkin spice latte, that orange lacquered desk from West Elm (a girl can dream). I found myself writing on the floor of the Newark Airport with my Sharpie and paper bag some great stuff that actually made it onto my blog. You gotta write to be a writer. So hard to do when you have the usual working parent’s 10-100 other balls in the air. ~ Cindy
I’m really honored to be on here…but I…don’t quite understand whats going on. What are we voting on? Should I be doing something? I can do something if you’d like. Also don’t respond to the email I gave, it’s a fraud that I never check. I check my site tho. Again, honored. But I’ve only been on WordPress a couple weeks and I have no idea what anything is.
I sent you an email explaining everything. Let me know if you have any other questions. Thanks so much for letting us share your post with our readers.
I’m overthinking because I have a horrible case of performance anxiety mixed with “I can’t write about THAT without burning some big bridges.”
Dear me.
I’m slowly losing my time to write to my hectic schedule (as detailed in my post). I’m trying to work it but I’m so dang tired all the time! I just want to sleep. I like your idea of setting aside 30 minutes every day. I just need to find those 30 minutes!
Ugh – it’s a sad state of affairs, isn’t it, when even 30 minutes is hard to find? When my kids were little I tried getting up *before* they did in the morning, so I was getting up around 5, which was brutal. And then THEY WOKE UP WITH ME. Ratfinks.
I spend 100% more time organizing my writing than I do writing. This is a problem.
I file that sort of activity (see what I did there?) under “productive procrastination.” In my house, that’s the only way the laundry gets done: mamma has a deadline, so she goes into a housekeeping frenzy.
Hey Deb, great to see you here! Your post is just the kick in the pants that I needed, so I thank you for that. I’ve been doing a lot more thinking about writing than actually sitting down to write. Congrats on the anthology, I can’t wait to read it.
Well, the percolating process is important, absolutely (my students are so young that they DO NOT KNOW what a percolater is). But then…it’s fingers on the keyboard time. Or pen on paper. Or something like that. I’ve tried just pressing my forehead to the computer screen but it doesn’t work. YET.