Getting down to the actual writing

I was thinking about writing habits and how so many writers are, or can be, procrastinators. Okay, I was procrastinating about writing and then started my typical worry wart path of hoping that I wasn't the only one that had trouble sitting down to write, even when I want to write. Now logically I know I am not alone. And logically I know that all writers have different methods and that's okay. But when I'm in worry mode I'm rarely logical.

Anne Tyler says, "I have to begin all over every day. I get up at 6 or 6:30 to clean the house, and feed the children, and cook our supper ahead of time, so that I can be perfectly free the instant the children leave for school; but then when they're gone I find I'd rather do almost anything than go into my study. The door is so tall and dark; it looms. The whole room smells like a carpenter's shop because of the wooden bookcases. Ordinarily it's a pleasant smell, but mornings, it makes me feel sick. I have to walk in as if by accident, with my mind on something else. Otherwise, I'd never make it."

Like Tyler, I tend to dance around my writing. I can't sit down first thing in the morning and write. First off, most mornings I am rushing off to work but even on the weekends, it's just not my style. I'm not a morning person so even though I'm up, I'm not awake for a couple of hours. I make my chai, read some email and blogs, get up a dozen times to look out the window at the birds. Decide to go out and feed the birds which means I should really go feed the fish in the pond. I scoop some leaves from the pond and pause to watch the Valley Carpenter bees dart from flower to flower looking for breakfast. They're big, fat, black bees, at least as big as my thumb, and look like they are covered in velvet. I follow the bees and discover the blue flax and the clarkia and the columbine seeds have dried out so of course I have to gather them before the birds eat them all. My dog stays right by my side as I gather seeds. She has somehow decided I need protecting during this process.

All at once a California poppy pod bursts, the sound easily heard above the chirping of the birds, and it is like an alarm clock that goes off, telling me that it is time to write. I call the dog and head right to the computer, anxious to see what happens next in my story.

Some Saturdays are like that.

Write on right now.
Susan