growing up writing

I was reading two articles this morning, ‘Faster, Authors, Faster!’ on Jane Friedman’s Writing On The Ether, and ‘The Sirens of Technology: Seven Ways Our Gadgets Drive Us Nuts’ by Richard Louv of slow-down-and-walk-in-the-woods fame, and I can’t help thinking I’m not keeping up. I don’t write fast enough, I don’t read enough, I’m lousy (but getting marginally better) at social media, and I’m frozen into immobility by my fears that I’m never going to get everything done that needs to be done in order for me to write, build a platform, publish my work, sell, sell, sell, whilst all the time writing some more, and failing some more to keep up with all the stuff I’m failing to keep up with…let alone walk in the woods.

And my WIP is not getting the attention it deserves because I’m too busy worrying about all the trappings of being a writer, and not doing enough, you guessed it, writing…

But my daughter does. She keeps a blog, jabberwockyjournal.com, writes regularly, and reads all the time. How does she do it? She ignores all the stuff that doesn’t matter to her. She doesn’t know that she’s supposed to be writing so many novels a year (she’s too busy writing novels). She doesn’t have a facebook page and worries not a whit about promoting her work (she writes because she loves to write). She keeps up with everything she chooses to keep up with. She writes because she loves write.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere…