[From the Archive] Chicken and Egg

This week’s archived post — and a short caveat on Time Management… Time Management is kinda like praying for patience… be careful what you ask for, if you want to improve your Time Management skills, you’ll be put in situations where you NEED to improve your Time Management Skills… just saying…

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If you ask a group of writers what does it for them – what they jones for – you’ll get one common answer and a number of “secondary” answers that equal the number of writers you ask. Fun stuff.

The common answer is, of course, a sale. After a couple of weeks of a stream of rejections (I personally had 4 in the last two weeks), any and all writers will jones for the rush of a sale. Any sale. Anywhere. Heck, I enjoyed the zing of doing a guest blog for Apex Book Company last week – which I did as a favor to a friend. Still… felt good…

Anyway, writing the guest blog reminded me in an organized kind of way that my “secondary” answer is “writing instruments” – pens, pencils, markers, you name it. Yes, I’m writer addicted to ink and graphite. Shocker. The most wonderful time of the year isn’t Christmas to me (which is up there and rocks for other reasons) but Back To School Sales in July – when office supplies go on serious sale.

However, the corollary thought was a more Chicken/Egg question. Which came first, my love of anything with a nib, ballpoint, or rollerball, or the passion to commit words to paper? Yes, my addiction to writing instruments does branch out to other office supplies, since you need paper to write on when you have a new pen, pencil, or marker. Right? Of course.

But the question remained. Did the love of ink come from an inherent need to put words on paper, or did my passion to write come from a sense of justification to feed the addiction? Quandary. Though, both occurred when I was about 10 – we may never know – just like how many licks it takes to get to the tootsie roll center of a Tootsie Pop…

So what does this have to do with writing in general? It’s one of the things I use to help prompt productivity. I do go in cycles. There are times I just want to write with a specific type of instrument: fountain pen (I adore the feel of a good fountain pen), rollerball (actually the finer the point the better), ball point, or pencil – and the mindset rotates. Then when I’m struggling for productivity, I rotate all together. I write for a while with one pen/pencil for a while – a few paragraphs or a page, then change out to something else. It’s also my way of culling out the ones that dry up, quit working, or whatever.

For me, it works – for the most part. I’ll find that I’ll finally get caught up in the project that I’ll forget to change the pen/pencil. And if for some reason my brain just refuses to function, the colorfulness of my pages make me smile when I go to type them up.

I also use the handwritten pages as the zero draft. I never do straight typing into the computer, there’s always editing involved. So when the project is completed, it’s at first draft, sometimes even close to final draft status, and I get the benefit of the tactile feeling of scratching out my thoughts on paper – there’s also the psychological benefits of ripping up unwanted pieces or throwing a paper wad across the room when an idea isn’t working. Composing on a computer doesn’t give that satisfaction — unless you’re into very expensive destruction. You could be, and if you have the resources to feed that jones, more power to you.

The point is, find what makes you jones to write and pursue it within the limits of your personal resources. Whatever gets you to place butt in chair and create word counts is okay. I will be putting words into action myself this week. Good luck to you.