Obligatory Reiteration: Writers Write (Or: “Welcome To Write Club”)

http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2014/03/31/obligatory-reiteration-writers-write-or-welcome-to-write-club/

I wrote some of this on Twitter this morning, but thought I’d place it here, too.

You will do many things as a writer.
Writers think, dream, scream, flail, procrastinate, market, edit, email, caffeinate, plot, scheme.
Writers gnash their teeth and pull their hair.
Writers read books, drink booze, tweet tweets, complain about Facebook redesigns.
Writers share information one minute, then greedily hoard it the next.
Writers research, then forget research, or ignore research.
Writers know that the real question you should ask them isn’t where they get their ideas but rather, holy hell, how do you make the ideas stop?
Writers work alone but travel in packs.
Writers jump the gun and then procrastinate.
Writers make excuses and find reasons and act as their own best friends and worst enemies.
Writers feel frail, powerful, godly, small, frustrated, infinite, limited, bewildered, afraid, uncertain, brave, certain — we’re all wounded ego, surefooted on broken ground, craving respect and needing an audience, introverts who are extroverts who are introverts.
Writers jump out of planes and build our parachutes on the way down.
Writers outline and worldbuild and make spreadsheets and mind-maps.
Writers create and destroy hundreds of characters and thousands of worlds — all before breakfast.
Writers burn themselves with brands and build up platforms that they have to tear back down and they get agents and find publishers or publish themselves and find the audience that will in turn find them and they’ll commune with themselves and their hearts and try to find the words and stories inside them that can’t stay inside any longer.
But above all of it:
Writers write.
They write, and they finish what they begin.
Put differently?
If this is your first night at Write Club, then you have to write.
If this is your second night, or eighth night, or nine-hundredth-and-forty-seventh night?
THEN YOU HAVE TO WRITE.
The first rule of Write Club is you can talk about Write Club all you want, but it’s no substitute for actually hunkering down and doing the work. Writers write. Say it again and again. Tattoo it on your forehead backward so you can read it when you look in the mirror. Writers write. Writers write. Writers rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. Ten words. Or a hundred. Or two thousand. As many as it takes in the order they need to be. Writers write.
So go write, writer. What are you still doing here?