I set off to work on my script early this morning and just as soon as I finish clearing out my working space, completing client deadlines, writing lectures, paying bills, calling about billing errors, looking for missing insurance cards, emailing for work, submitting competition entries, blah, blah, and oh that’s right… blah, I’ll get to my writing. Morning has crept into night now and stopping the day-to-day stuff to be able to write is beginning to feel like a hopeless scheduling conflict. It’s not like I’m blowing off my 9 to 5 to drop out with my French valet in a Hong Kong opium den or sneaking off for a few rounds of wii (though I could happily spend hours fine-tuning my wii me character, but that aside). Writing feels like the dessert that I only get to enjoy after I’ve forced down the rancid fly-infested slop served to me by the unyielding lunch ladies I call the “to do list.”
I have to tell you that during today’s excruciating battle with life’s minutiae, a magical thing happened. The kid across the street suddenly began practicing his bagpipes and segued seamlessly from the Bonnie Hoose O’Airlie (or another tune equally funny in title) right into the theme to Star Wars. Yes! That Star Wars! Now… there ain’t nothing in my book quite like a heaving animal bladder bursting forth with an uplifting and jaunty tune from my childhood.
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This is one of the most dangerous things for a writer, that feeling that you must get everything else done first, THEN sit down to write. You have to fight a lifetime of conditioning and reverse that. Writing comes first, then get to the To-Do list. It's really hard to do, but it's possible.
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