The class was silent. The Sensei, all 6 foot 2, ultimately disciplined fighting machine of him, clenched and un-clenched his fists. He waited, impatient to order me a hot dish of press-ups. Or the worse fate: press-ups for the rest of the class while I squirmed. My mind raced, whirling off into the distance and scattering into a million tiny stars. I swear I could remember every French vocabulary word I learnt in high school… but not this damned precept.
Just as he was about to lose patience, the words came to me in a flash of brilliance. “Karate is like boiling water,” I managed to say.
I have never forgotten that. He was telling us we needed to come to class regularly. If boiling water is not kept on the heat, it will return to a tepid state. It requires sustained energy. If you do not practice karate often and with maximum effort, you will not make progress. (Gichin Funakoshi, 1936)
(I do have a point!)
Writing is also like boiling water. Not because you work hard and boil it so long that nothing is left but a blackened pot reflecting your sad face (ahem). I am not into ‘writing rules’ and everyone has their own method. And I’m not doing Nano this year – that challenge to write 50k words of a new novel in November (Next year, I always say, when life won’t be so busy!) But I think writing a little every day (or nearly every day) is ultimately useful. It keeps those neurons in different parts of the brain firing.
I write every day – for work. I have spent my time writing website and marketing copy recently and one gets used to using persuasive language. There is a formula to it, a pattern. It requires some thinking but nowhere near the brain-power to write tight fiction. I have noticed myself losing that gritty honesty, that creativity that sings a universal truth to another human.
It takes me a long time to get into the world of my novel. I have to go to France, then I have to immerse myself in the hierarchies of 18th century France. Imagine a plain wooden table and a household doing everything they can to stay afloat, a controlling husband and a widow mother. Grubby skirts and candles, outdoor toilets and no contraception. It takes me longer than a few minutes to get into the characters’ heads.
So while I’m so busy with freelance contracts, I’ve been writing short stories and flash fiction, just a little bit each night. And even the process of thinking of ideas to write to a prompt sparks questions in your mind. Those questions lead to more and more scenarios and one of them may even be a GOOD IDEA.
And I’m noticing the difference – ideas that are a little crazy, a little outside of the norm. Perhaps there is something in that Nano thing everyone is talking about?
My point is curl up your fists, grip your pens, and punch through the creative block from your 9-5. Start writing every day, even if it is only 100 words. 50 words. Or 2 words.
Do you write every day?