Rule Number Seven

I really do believe that you can't grow as a writer unless you grow as a person.  And some of us just have further to go, ok?  For example, take the fact that I am extremely inflexible.  My days are scheduled out in such a way that if someone asks me to go to lunch, I have to say, "I'm sorry.  I can't.  I have to write my blog."  Now, on the one hand, this has given me a large measure of self discipline... but, balance in all things, right? I have now figured out how this is handicapping my story.

It comes down to killing your darlings.  Do you think a person that can not drop a blogging appointment with herself to go to lunch can kill her darlings?  Seriously, who knows what I gave up in my life to write all that darling stuff in the first place.  A date out to lunch, to be sure.  It feels a lot like opening a drain and just letting a portion of your life flow down it.  Sounds very depressing, eh?  Yeah, I thought so too.  Until I figured something out.  We are in a learning process, and the opposite of rule number seven is also true.  As we write, we grow as a person.

I have more motivation than ever to learn to be more flexible, because you just can't write good books when you are unwilling to bend.  I need to treat both life and writing more like clay and less like glass.  It's better when you look at it as something that can come undone and re-molded better than it was the first time. Be willing to change everything if necessary.  It's easy.  Or this is what I try telling myself.

I will say this: I have learned never to spend 20 minutes picking the right word again, unless you are very sure it's the final draft.