Hello,

When you need to write, write, whenever and wherever you can.

I woke at 4:00 a.m. to write and so did Dan Brown of The-You-Know-What so I’m in good company. As a matter of fact at his official website: www.danbrown.com, he is quoted as saying “If I'm not at my desk by 4:00 A.M., I feel like I'm missing my most productive hours”. We’re all grateful he’s so productive, it eventually creates great reading for us, for me though, I feel tired at this time yet I know it’s the best time for me too. So I sit on the couch with the house silent except for the house sounds and I manage a page and half before its time to exercise, get the kids up and get on with the rest of my day.

To find the time—no--make the time to write, so that we create a work of physical heft, something of weight that can be read from top to bottom, paged through, used as a door stop if need be, content whatever you want, believe in, know (don’t know) love can be a tremendous undertaking in itself. As ninety-seven percent of us writers know becoming a full-time writer is not just a dream, but a fantasy and is the world of only three percent of published writers and we know who they are, yet even for full-time writer’s; life, dare I say it? Gets in the way and has to be attended to so you work the writing into your real life. J.K.Rowling at her official website: www.jkrowling.com was asked, “How many hours a day do you spend writing?” Ms. Rowling replied, “Anything from ten minutes (with a new baby…) to ten hours.” Those ten minutes can be all we’ll get to write that scene, flesh out the new character, it sometimes can be enough and in Ms. Rowling’s case, her ten minutes add up to great books.

So you’ll take that ten minutes to write and for me it can be while my kid is going over his spelling list or taking down a character note while I’m waiting at a red light. Sometimes I get more than ten minutes, an hour after I’ve done all my projects at work, twenty minutes to scribble a paragraph while my kids play ball in the park, write anywhere and everywhere. And writing is not just the physical act of putting pen to paper writing is also the thinking process, mind-mulling-process, ruminating that you must find the time to do and it’s just as important as putting pen to paper or fingers to computer keys. T.C. Boyle writer of Talk Talk at www.tcboyle.com puts it beautifully on his April 25, 2006 news posting, “The news is that I haven't yet begun the new novel. I'm still creeping through the indecipherable notes, brooding, tugging at my beard, awaiting the propitious moment and the infusion of my brain and soul with the radiant light of conception.”

Mary Higgins Clark said it pretty well: “When my children were young, I used to get up at five and write at the kitchen table until seven, when I had to get them ready for school. For me writing is a need.” It’s like that for us too, I know it is, so write whenever you can, make the time, five minutes, fifteen hours, find it, create it, steal it, just do it, feed that need—write.
If you’ll like to comment, I look forward to it or would like to e-mail me at: matwrite1@hotmail.com.

See you next time God willing,

Lori