Hanging In There

My all-time favorite band is English rock band The Who. My love affair with them has lasted over 30 years. In fact I don't think anything has consistently been part of my life that long besides them...except for my love of writing.

Most of their lyrics reach me on a gut level and often when I listen to them, I know I have found kindred spirits...someone out there thinks like I do.

I want the same response from other people when I write. I want people to read my words and say "Yes! I understand that. I have thought like that. I have felt like that."

Instead, I usually feel apart from other people. I know many writers are eccentric, myself included. The words I write are like opening a vein, spilling my blood and guts. I am self-critical to an extreme, and when others imply that my work is less than perfect, I really want to crawl into a hole.

Yet I am compelled to keep writing.

The Who has a song that touched my heart years ago, a song about the drive to write - in Pete Townshend's case to write songs. It's called "Guitar and Pen".

The lyrics state:

"You're alone above the street somewhere
Wondering how you'll ever count out there
You can walk, you can talk, you can fight
But inside you've got something to write
In your hand you hold your only friend
Never spend your guitar or your pen."

Townshend goes on to describe the total frustration of searching for just the right word...

"When you take up a pencil and sharpen it up
When you're kicking the fence and still nothing will budge
When the words are immobile until you sit down
Never feel they're worth keeping, they're not easily found
Then you know in some strange, unexplainable way
You must really have somethingJumping, thumping, fighting, hiding away
Important to say"

And then the moment when it all comes together:

"It suddenly comes after years of delay
You pick up your guitar
YOU CAN SUDDENLY PLAY!!!"

In my writing endeavors, I often suffer crippling self-doubt. Sometimes I think I have no talent at all. Other times the words just flow and I think

YOU CAN SUDDENLY WRITE!!!

But there really isn't anything sudden about it, is there?

Writing Amidst Distractions

I prefer to write in total silence. I often arise at 5 a.m. to write, partly because I am a morning person and that is when I am most alert and partly because usually no one else is up at that time and I can write for a brief time in silence. For me as a writer, silence is what allows me to most clearly hear the whisper of my muse.

Unfortunately most of my writing time can't be spent in silence. The Muse gets drowned out by a curious spouse, demanding children and pets, ringing telephones, blaring TVs and stereos, not to mention the sounds of sirens and trains outside my window. Yet a writer must write, with or without distractions.

Writers are a strange breed. Even though we want to write, most of us are even compelled to write, we find ourselves making excuses and procrastinating. We go to make coffee when there's a full pot; we sharpen pencils even when we're writing on a computer; we stop to check our email and never return to our word processing program.

The classic book Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande addresses this problem. This book belongs in the library of every writer. Ms. Brande states that if you want to be a writer, you need to make an appointment with yourself to sit and write for a period of time every day. Start with 10 or 15 minutes and gradually increase the time. The point is that during this appointed time, you write and don't do anything else. This exercise helps develop the discipline to sit and write on command, but also helps you to gradually increase your tolerance for distractions.

By doing an exercise like this, you will gradually get better at writing amidst distractions. You will improve with practice and eventually you will find that no matter how chaotic it is around you, you'll still be able to hear the whisper of The Muse.