Writing Enough

I’m not writing enough.

I hear myself say that every day. I’m sitting here in the chaos that is my workspace—I like it that way—surrounded by six printed copies of my draft novel with Beta comments (I am in the process of sorting through them so I can rewrite the next draft and improve upon the foundations I laid in the first , or at least, that's the intention), craft books, unread novels, half-read novels, pens, paper, lip balm, hand cream, water cups, candles, flags, a lamp, and a sewing machine. The sewing machine serves no purpose except to remind me of two things: (i) no one single person has to be able to do everything on the planet; and (ii) it's okay to not be able to do something for myself. You may think that's easy to remember. For someone like me, it's not. But that's for another day, you see, because I'm not writing while I talk about the sewing machine sitting on my desk, collecting dusk, with a black tin car made out of a kazoo sitting on the spindle area. 

I should be working on editing that novel, or putting down the new story that is floating through my brain made up by a sibling of the creature who created the draft(s) sitting next to me. In fact, I wish I could stay home and work on that all day.

But it's tough to be a paid writer these days. Everyone can write a book, and every other person has self-published at least one. Even journalists have a tough time out there. If you aren't a big name, you're a freelancer, and you're expected to sell your rights along with your story. And unless you do give up those rights, you're not covered if something you write happens to insult someone else. I spend my days writing emails about situations just like that. Very long emails. Sometimes they're at least three or four paragraphs. Other times I'm writing to websites scraping content that is put forth by these underpaid writers. These are much longer letters, letting these sites know that they can't get away with infringement. Those are sometimes two or three page letters. I work on contracts, communications, special projects, all of which involve some type of written communication -- memos, emails, letters -- all written by me. I would say I write an average of 10,000 words per day at work. 

Throughout the day, in the early morning, and often in the evening, before I sit down at my workspace, I check in with my organizations (writing organizations, schools, and the like) and write emails. Couple of sentences here, a few more there. Not much, nothing more than a paragraph.

Then there are the messages - instant messaging, text messaging. I don't write one or two word answers. I remember the days when we had to pay per text, so I like to get my money's worth out of that ten cents per text. But now, messaging is practically unlimited. And I'm a writer. I talked about this with other writers the other day, and we know we have a problem with instant messaging. Where many of our friends are good with one word, nay, one letter (don't get me started about that), we're off writing a blog per message. So those are a few words I get in. I would say at least 50 per message, sometimes 100, sometimes, uh, more...oops. 

After all of that, I find myself here, at my workspace, realizing that I haven't written at all today. My goal is to write at least a paragraph a day, whether that be in my edits or on a new piece. Sometimes I do more than a paragraph, and sometimes less. Yesterday I was so consternated at things going on in life I wrote a poem in a fitted peak. But that's not a paragraph. 

But today I haven't written a paragraph at all. Instead, I wrote this blog entry. 

People always ask me, "How's your writing going?" I always say I'm not writing enough. Because, as you can see, I'm not.

When I start writing enough, that's when I'll stop and take a Netflix break.