Inspiration Vs Job

I've always felt that for good writing to happen you have to look at what you do as if it's a second job. There's your day job, and then there's writing. Admittedly, I haven't put in many hours on that second job lately. Instead, I realized today that I've been writing under a very different and much worse platform: inspiration writing.

It isn't that there's something wrong with feeling inspired. Sometimes an idea might hit you in the middle of the night, you leap out of bed and scribble it down on whatever scrap of paper you reach first because it's just that damn good of an idea!!! The thing is, this doesn't happen whenever you want. You know what does happen anytime you so choose? Just plain out writing. It's like what I said in my first post, the idea of writing professional is attractive to me because of the freedom it provides, you work when you please. The thing is, you still have to work, you have to write. Inspiration doesn't sit down to a table, pick up the pen and put down some story. You have to make the writing happen, whether it's inspired or not. Something I strongly believe is that the key to writing is to not be afraid to write worthless material. You can fix up worthless material into something worthwhile. There's no second draft to be made from a blank page.

The reason this is suddenly so important to me is because of a book I've been reading lately, called “Novelist's Boot Camp” by Todd A. Stone. The whole thing is very good, but there's one section that stands out to me. Drill 10 (because it's 'boot camp') describes how it's a bad idea to write whatever's “trendy” at the current time. The reason being is that is takes a long time to get something published. Stone explains the ideal situation to write a book: you have no other job, you spend 12 hours each day on the thing, you're accepted by the first publisher you mail, they push your book out as quickly as they can.

“Total elapsed time from concept to store shelf – in a theoretical best-of-all-possible-worlds scenario – would be about eighteen to nineteen months.”

I've got a day job, I've got friends, I've got community theatre, I've got organizations I belong to, and I've got times when I just like to chill out. If I'm able to squeeze in three hours of writing per day, I'd be lucky to have the novel published within three years. Three hours a day would be a very small second job. Writing on inspiration alone won't get me a novel published until retirement.

You just have to want it bad enough.