“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work,” so says Stephen King in his memoir, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.
Sandra Phinney freelance writer and member of the Yarmouth Write Away group couldn’t agree more. “Waiting for inspiration before I start to write? Sorry honey, ain’t gonna happen. That would be like waiting to hear I won the lotto … but I never buy lotto tickets. If I waited for inspiration to hit before I started to write, I would not be a writer. The only way I get inspired is by putting bum in chair, fingers to keyboard and start writing.”
She goes on to say, “…the sheer act of putting fingers to keyboard gets the ball rolling. Something always unfolds.”
Therein lays the truth. Waiting for the perfect word, the perfect sentence to make itself apparent is a waste of time.
Instead of wasting your time, make good use of it. Responding to a daily writing prompt for ten minutes can get things started. Think of it as a warm up stretch before your work out.
A prompt I like to use is C. M.Mayo’s Giant Golden Buddha five minute writing exercises, found here at www.cmmayo.com/d5.index.html.
Prompts aside, we would do well to take Stephen and Sandra’s advise by showing up for work, tapping away at our keyboards keeping our bums in our chairs.
Janice Comeau Nov. 2017
