500 Plus Words

500 words a day. No excuses. 

Man I hate when I tell others what I need to constantly tell myself. Writing, like diets, like New Year's Resolutions, is a practice full of promise before you start. It teases with the dreams of somehow carving out a phrase that people love and hold from that point forward.

High school students know the reality of the work even if they don't comprehend the joy. It's work, and it's hard, and it involves details. To write when you're inspired is the same as to exercise when you feel up to it, it's a hobby, it's dabbling. It's dating with no intent of anything other than to pass the time.

Writing as a daily regimen, whether you feel like it or not, whether you have time for it or not, whether you have a plan for what to write or not, that's the stuff. That's what turns a wish into the beginnings of a reality. Everything before, everything that came after we started, was part of the process, but when you embrace writing as a part of breathing, as necessary as water, sun and air, that's when you cease to be a pretender, a dabbler, and become a writer.

You may never be published. You may never be famous. Your bank account may never rival J.K. Rowling. It might be that only your mother reads your stuff, and she edits your writing. However, if you write every day, if you persist, no matter how tired or annoyed or uninspired you feel as you put your fingers to the keyboard or pen to paper, you are a writer, and you are living what others only dream of being. 

I thought I'd end the essay there. It's tidy.

However, I still have two hundred and eighteen plus words left to write. (Sigh). Maybe I should edit my total down to 400 words...heh. Except I know, I'd know. So what else can I say about this profession, this obsession, this dream/addiction we have with words?

It creeps into everything. My purse is littered with snatches of conversations I hear, inspirations for future articles, and scenes I've scralled onto receipts from the drycleaner's and grocery store. The kids have learned if Mom is stressed to bring her her laptop. She'll get to typing, syphon everything out, and return to normal.

My husband sees me typing and knows, the house could be on fire. A snake could curl up in my lap, and  I'd not notice. It is a moment away from the world that somehow describes what is experienced in it, to be writing. Time falls away. Has it been fifteen to sixteen years? It has, that I've been carving out words. Some of my kids remember before this became the norm. I think I might have been boring.

So write and make yourself get to the count, even if the words themselves don't seem like much. The minimum keeps you from stopping, it keeps you from thinking, I don't have to push. The count is your weight resistance, and you're building strength even if you don't want to.

It's when we exercise beyond what is pleasant, we gain the greatest benefit. When we pray in the midst of dryness that our prayers are most efficacious, and when we love others long after the emotional component is the driving force of our motivations, that we reveal how much we love. So it is with writing. When we write outside of inspiration, that we reveal, both our love for this art, this craft, and our essence as professionals.

Keep writing. 500 tomorrow. There will be more to say. I promise.