Tonight I will continue work on my
novel. But first I need to make dinner. After dinner I will continue
working on my novel. But my husband puts on Pinocchio, and thats
really cute of him. So after I watch the beginning, I will start
working on my novel. Tony quickly shuts it off, giving me that
knowing stare. I leave to go to the bathroom.
    As I get there, to the bathroom, I walk
past a purposely positioned framed quote by J.R.R. Tolkien. My eyes catch the great, big, red letters.

    “It is the job never started that
takes longest to finish.”

    I sigh. It’s not that I don’t want to
write, writing is etched into my very being. When I am free to let my
fingers go my world vibrates into a shiny, happy place. It’s
intoxicating. It’s beautiful. It’s scary. My ribcage open, heart out,
my blood oozing all over the place. What if all I have inside is just
garbage? That fear paralyzes me. I know that I should be satisfied
just being able to express my art, but who doesn’t want their work to be loved by someone
else? This is why a writing community comes in handy. I need to
constantly be reminded that ninety percent of what we write will be
garbage. Natalie Goldberg in Writing Down the Bones has
admitted that she has notebooks upon notebooks of garbage. Only by
writing constantly can we get to that golden ten percent. We all have
barriers. Some are full time jobs and babies, while others are
emotional. My first novel writing professor, Laraine Herring, said
that writing not only took bravery but also routine. A writer has to
get into a habit and we have to push ourselves. It’s like going to
the gym. It takes time to get into a groove and if I stop, even for a
day, it takes awhile to get back into it again. It’s like that for
writing and if you slip, well, there is no reason to get mad at
yourself. Just fight that battle tomorrow and keep going because of
what it means to you. A faculty member at Hamline told me that he has
heard so many good ideas but so many of those ideas never come into
existence. If you sit, write, and finish a work, then you are that
much more ahead of all those other people. But you have to start in
order to finish.