Occasionally people ask, “How do you write every day? Doesn’t that take a lot of discipline?”

Well it does and it doesn’t. Remember that I am also an Anthropologist so I am familiar and comfortable with pending projects. Many years ago, right after college, I was also a journalist, [print media and television] and that gives you experience on meeting deadlines and bringing writing projects to a quick finish better than anything I know. Editors don’t have a sense of humor where deadlines are involved. There is no excuse that will satisfy them except maybe someone severed one of your legs then stole your car. Then they want to know why you didn’t “hop to it!”

People wonder how great it would be to sit by a window and just write. They imagine that we just relax and let the prose pour out of us like a turned-on faucet. But it’s never like that. You are not only writing to reach some deadline, yours or your publishers—but remember you have your life to contend with as well. Some days the words just won’t come and you wander around your house or the neighborhood or the mall and pray for the muse. Sometimes there is a breakup or a death or a family member is in peril or a friend has confided in you something you would rather have not heard. We all go through this but, as a creator of original work of some kind, it’s a real performance killer.

It’s the same for artists of all medium whether it’s literature, art, music, the dramatic arts and the rest. As a producer of original work, you must perform on good days and bad—most of the time because you told someone you could do that, and they believed you.

[To be continued…]