Hillary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall, among her excellent works, may well offer the most helpful advice of all.
If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don’t just stick there scowling at the problem. But don’t make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people’s words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient.
This journal is intended to be a place for you to get away and explore the outer reaches of your immense imagination.
It may also help to remember the immense power of writing. A writer’s great gift is the ability to transmogrify experience even as a host becomes the Body of Christ, if you will indulge my Irish Catholic sensibilities for a moment.
One can uplift, inspire, console, and commune with one’s words, or one can denigrate, depress, alarm, or alienate. I choose my words carefully and try to be an apprentice of the first way. It’s easier to do in writing because one has time to think before blurting out some unkind missive.
As my sophomore year journalism teacher, Sister Michael David, BVM, once told her eager students, “Choose your words carefully; they are a matter of life and death.” She then proved her point by telling us that when Queen Victoria wanted to quell a revolution in Ireland, she rounded up all the poets and writers and hung them—that’s how powerful one’s words can be to the world.
Warmly,
Becca Anderson
“You should be writing.”
It echoes in your head as you circle the desk, go for a run, watch a movie, pet the dog, eat dinner, have sex, do your best to fall asleep. You might not know why you’re not writing. Even if you did, it probably wouldn’t help.
You’re not alone. At some point, nearly every writer (including yours truly) struggles with the inability to get (or keep) the pen moving. Unfortunately, that fact won’t help either. You might feel less lonely, but it won’t fill the page.
The only cure for not writing is writing. That’s where this journal comes in.
You should be writing.
Let this journal be a space for you to start, get lost, finish, abandon, return to, and simply have. Let this be a place where your pen flows freely and you get your words down while your head is filled with inspiring and instructive quotes from some of the world’s best writers.
Start this journal at the beginning and work your way through, or open to any page, find a quote that feeds you, use that as your prompt, and GO! Just get your pen moving. That’s the key. We are fighting inertia, apathy, and terror. The remedy for each is the same. Get your pen moving and let the words lead.
If you’re a thinking type, make your outlines on these pages. Sketch your characters. Plan your story. Draw your maps and battlefields. Design the clothing and makeup. Plot your grand schemes.
Heart-centered writers might doodle or make lists of all the people their writing will help or change. Pour your huge heart onto the page. Just get moving.
At each of the twenty-five week-long writing retreats I attended or assisted with bestselling author Natalie Goldberg, when it was time to write, her cue was always the same. “Ten minutes, GO!” The only thing more powerful than the pen is the timer. Whether I use the microwave timer, the white digital model I keep in my backpack, or the app on my phone, the pressure cooker effect of setting a specified amount of writing time saves me again and again. It’s only ten minutes. I can do nearly anything (endure nearly any pain) for ten minutes. Once I get going, the timer goes off, and I ignore it. The water is flowing. I’m free. Try that if it helps you begin. Just, begin!
It’s been a joy to gather and organize theses quotes. Brenda and I eagerly piled up our favorites, and I divided them into chapters that made sense to me. The quotes on the left-hand pages are intended to inspire, while those on the right-hand pages instruct. Brenda and I did our best to cover all the bases, but you surely have more of your own.
So, use this journal in whatever way suits you. But please, get to it.
At Natalie’s retreats, we chanted this reminder:
I beg to urge you everyone:
Life and Death are a Great Matter
Awaken, awaken, awaken
Time passes quickly
Do not waste this precious life.
Now, GO!
Every vocation has a long history of apprenticeship. Writing is no different. We writers can learn from the hard-earned experience of the masters, studying techniques honed from years of practice and success. We can watch, take their work apart, learn their habits, and mimic them in order to find our way. We can follow the trail of breadcrumbs they left behind and see if it suits our work.
You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it.
—Susan Orlean
Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it.
—Zadie Smith
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