Progress is daily on the road to glory

I was recently reminded about one of the best books I ever read/acted on: The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.  I'm  planning to re-read it in the near future--even got it down and put it in the stack of books by my bed--but I've lived by it for more than a decade. Cameron's book is about nurturing our creativity--making room for it in our lives, balancing input and output, reaching for our goals, finding our way.  You read one chapter a week, write three pages a day of anything (when I first read it in the 90s, I wrote a journal, now I use the idea for my book) first thing in the morning, and have a date with yourself once a week to go someplace that nourishes your spirit and gives your creativity a boost. 

As I finished another scene in my book today, I felt again how important it is to write every day--to keep the momentum going, the story line straight in my mind, and my characters awake in my consciousness. Right now they are clattering around all over the place, anxious to break out and tell their stories. So I guess Cameron's method is working.

the more I struggle...

Writing is such a balance of discipline and inspiration. I need energy to write--emotional and physical energy, and I need to harness it with b.i.c. (butt in chair) time. I can't squeeze out those words, but I can sit down and write something, and write something more, then something more. Then I edit and come up with about two-thirds of what I started with that's worth keeping. I can't MAKE the book come out, but I can encourage it out, coax it out. When words start flowing onto the page, eventually, the dam breaks and the real stuff comes--like priming an old-fashioned water pump--anybody remember those?  Of course, then that is followed by editing, re-writing, and re-writing some more. One writer once said, "It's easy to write a book. All you do is sit in the chair and open a vein."