This has not been a Happening Sunday in any traditional sense.. No romantic adventures or literary breakthroughs or even spats with family or friends. But the fact that I'm writing about this at all is a small sort of personal breakthrough.
Listen:
For many years my head was stuffed with the most useless nonsense: all great writers had to be two-fisted drunks, world-travelers and treacherous spouses. They owed it to Posterity and to their biographers to be bigger than life, 24x7, while they wrote the masterpieces that their lives eclipsed. Etc. I had my adventures, some great ones. But the more we all learn about writing, the more wonderfully we grow aware that all that stuff is poppycock--more often than not, poor excuses to avoid the real adventure...the real test of soul and courage: sitting again by one's lonesome with a fresh day's naked pages defying us to fill them. There are Alps to be scaled here and deserts to cross, hair turns that take the breath away.
Even so, some days in the lives of professional writers are quieter than others. And this Little Nothing Sunday pleasantly surprised me by turning out to seem not so little after all. I began work at 6 a.m. at one of my two Starbucks 'offices'. For the first two hours, I worked on social media and proofing my next digital release, APRIL YULE. By 9, I'd crossed town to my second 'office', where: I finished my March post for Authors Electric, the collective UK blog...continued proofing AY...typed up more first draft pages of my fall thriller...and ended up with another, shorter social media session. On the way home I stopped at a new wi-fi McDonald's for a coffee while I typed this post for Southern Scotch.
It's been a good day because it encompassed so much of the business of writing. Few of us have secretaries or even virtual assistants. Many of us do our own proofing as well as our own editing. Add in the writing--and some reading too--and you begin to see the need for redefining a 'good day'.
The temperature's mild. It's still mid-afternoon. And, no, I did not chase bulls in Pamplona or cheat with the wife of a friend or start a brawl while dead drunk in a bar...Even so, I'm grateful for this quietly Happening Sunday.
Monday P.S.: The Sunday ended with a return to stretching and meditation--short sessions for each--after an absence of...I can't recall. I slept like a baby!
A fine post, Reb. It's true about those myths. With few exceptions, the whisky soaked, street fighting, bar crawling macho writer is just that: a figure of myth. To write well, it's better if one has a clear healthy mind in a healthy body. And even then it's hard work. But a good workout in the gym will produce far better writing than an afternoon in the local saloon any day.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Tony. That particular truth was a long time coming for me. I didn't succeed in writing a book I could sell till I'd put the bottle behind me. Cheers.
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