Every Day

Common advice tells you to write every day.

I never got the hang of it.

NaNoWriMo is coming soon, and then, I’ll write every day. I’ll live in one project (the last of the full Planetary Tarantella novels, An Epitaph For Everything Else) so completely that I’ll dream it and forget how to talk about anything else. But that’s for one month. The rest of the year, I tend to tinker with existing projects when I feel so moved. Occasionally a story idea hits and I write like lightning for a glorious moment in time. I think I’ve told you before that 99% of all writing advice is garbage, and I stand by that. You don’t have to write every day. I don’t feel like a failure for not writing every day.

You know what I do, though? I play with words every day. I read, I listen, I do crossword puzzles, I learn about the origins of phrases. I even talk to myself while I do other work to see if anything interesting comes out. These practices, I can recommend.

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There’s a lot of life stuff going on for me right now, and someday soon I’ll tell you all about it, but I’m not ready. The short version is, I am in Vermont. New York City was wearing me thin. If you need me, I’ll be in the woods.