Back to the Minors? (116)

I was interested yesterday to see a thread via Stephen King (TOSK) that seemed to be generated by a post from Brian Klems.  That post is at: http://danasitar.com/2013/04/22/writing-a-book and is titled 3 Things You Shouldn’t do When Writing a Book. 

Well, you know people do write self help articles, all headed with either ‘3 things’ or ‘5 things’ or ’10 things.’  And, they are usually somewhat, if not totally helpful.  At the low end, they can still generate some arguments or some ideas on how to get you moving in the right/write direction.

The article from Brian Klems got a good thread started when he suggested that ‘writers’ should make sure to write a minimum of 30 minutes a day, even when they didn’t feel like it and even if it only generated a few hundred words.

The thread comebacks were everything from how wrong he was to many other suggestions. Some of those were that a writer should produce at least 5,000 written words a day or that writers should give themselves some time off if they need a break. This reminded me so much of comments about pitchers and hitters in one of my favorite sports–baseball.

Let’s see. A pitcher has a fast ball of pretty consistently hitting 97 miles per hour and can get it past the batter most times. He has 8 great games during his pitch rotation. Then, horrors, he has a run of 4 or 5 ‘bad’ games. His pitch just isn’t hitting the speed or he can’t control it any more. What happens? First of all, the fans are terribly upset when the team starts losing. And, of course, the sports writers are all in a tizzy and start to make suggestions of changing the lineup and of what in the world can be done to get the pitcher back up to grade.

Everyone wants to make suggestions and they can range from sending the pitcher ‘down’ to the minors, or moving his spot in the rotation, or trading him, or having him take a few days off. Does anyone ask the pitcher? Sure they do but usually in a rude or accusatory manner. It would be something like this: “Do you still think you can help the team?” Or, “What do you think you need to do to get back on track?” Or, “Should you work more on that fast pitch?” Or even the very obvious, “Why do you think you can’t control the pitch?”

This seems so much to be what happens when writers have ‘block’ or burn out. Should they be required to continue writing 30 minutes a day or 5,000 words a day? Should they be required to take the week off to regroup? Or is all of this based on very individual situations and personalities? My personal thoughts on this are that writers should write every day. It’s a matter of staying in a position to be open to the muse or to the momentum to write. I can’t say how much time others should write but I can say that in most disciplines, whether writing, pitching, playing an instrument, or teaching, every day should include some exercise of your passion/vocation.

I am grateful for the posts of people like Brian Klems with suggestions for new writers on how to get in the pattern of being a writer and I won’t quibble over the details of whether writing should be timed or should be by the word. Whatever it is, it is good, and directs a novice writer to move into the world of becoming a ‘writer’ and helps them become involved, motivated, and inspired.