Whenever I miss a day of writing, even if I've been in a slump, writing junkola that will never see the light of day, I suffer from writers' guilt. Writers' guilt is different from every other kind of guilt, because even if you binge write for three days straight, dripping beautiful prose onto the page, if you declare a sabbatical for the forth day, you suffer.
The muse demands daily faithfulness, and is slow to return favors if you blow off a day.
Recently, my humor writing has been reported awol. Reports of the death of my funny bone however, are premature. I still have eight of ten sources of inspiration in the house, and two due to return home in the next month. I'm sure they'll think of something if they haven't already.
As if on cue, I heard from the other room, "Paul, stop throwing that monkey." I am certain I should stop and check. I am equally certain, I don't really want to know.
The cure for Writers' guilt is pure maintenance. Write every day. Write when you have nothing to say. Write junk if you have to, but don't leave a day without leaving something on the page.
However, I've decided there is a caveat to surviving Writers' Guilt. I need a Writing buddy who will solemnly swear upon my death to access my blog and delete all the junkola I wrote and didn't submit for your reading pleasure or pain as the case may be so that all the drafts sitting on the back page of my blog get squished.
In the meantime, you're stuck with me complaining about writers' block and writers' guilt and blathery pages like this one in part because I'm still thinking, I don't want to go out there and find out what happened with Paul and the monkey.
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