somedaybitch

...Which brings me to the Third (and, thankfully, last) Cosmic Rule of Writing...namely, 'Writing Begets Writing.'

If you're stuck on a difficult scene, write it anyway.

Write it badly. Write it in verse. Write it as a journal entry, a Dennis Miller rant. If you're frustrated at being stuck, write about that. I don't care. But write.

If you have angry, self-critical feelings, give them to a character in your story. If there isn't a likely candidate, invent one. There IS one, anyway: you. Your anguish, doubt, fears and frustrations are as vital and elemental to what you're writing as any character or plot point. Might as well make use of this fact.

Writing begets writing. Just as worrying begets worrying. Obsessing begets more obsessing. Pacing back and forth begets -- well, you get the idea.

When you risk writing from where you're at, you set in motion a whole set of internal processes. The first rotten sentence you write has a life you can inhabit, evaluate, cross out. This first attempt can be replaced by a second, hopefully less rotten sentence -- maybe a good piece of description or a sharp line of dialogue.

Then again, maybe not. But it doesn't matter. Just keep going. As William Goldman reminds us, some scenes you write are just going to be sludge, but they're important connective tissue. They keep things moving; they're links in a chain. Weak links, perhaps, but you can always go back and strengthen them later.

With what? The knowledge that you've written, for one thing, because writing doesn't just beget writing, it also begets -- and reinforces -- the reality that you can write; that pages will accumulate.

Look at it this way: Every hour you spend writing is an hour NOT spent fretting about your writing. Every day you produce pages is a day you DIDN'T spend sitting at a coffee shop, bitching about not producing any pages.

Writing begets writing. Not writing begets...well...not writing. You do the math.

--Dennis Palumbo
writer and licensed psychotherapist