Ask anyone to whom I ever talk writing and they'll tell you that I get a little crazy-eyed.
I'm a bit of an instigator. Mostly I instigate more writing. Sometimes I instigate things like the following photograph.
I'll let you look at that picture a moment longer.
Yes, I was responsible for that. These are the sorts of antics we get up to at our writers group.
The Illiterati, if you're not one of us, you've never experienced... well... just look at that photo again.
Anyhow, I'm an instigator. But more than that, I've discovered that I'm a motivator. I want to see people live their dream of becoming a writer. It excites me when I talk to other writers.
One of the things I'm always getting crazy-eyed about is: "If you want to be a writer, you've gotta write."
Sounds simple, but I can't tell you how many people I've heard say something along the lines of: "Oh, I'm a writer too, but I don't really have time to write. I used to write in high school, and my mom says it was really good. I'm just waiting until I have more time. I've been working on this novel for 10 years now. I've got a few chapters kinda done."
Among all of this I want to ask them how they have the audacity to call themselves writers.
See, writers write. NOW. Not, they used to write. Not they're thinking of writing, or telling everyone on Twitter or facebook that they write. THEY WRITE. Nothing can stop them from writing. They'd use a sharpened toothbrush and their blood for ink if they had to.
We're not talking about literary merit. That's something for the critics to argue. We're just saying, writers write. It may be dross, it may be plotless and full of Mary Sue characters, but it's been written!
*ahem. I just caught myself ranting. See? There's the proof of my crazy-eyed passion about motivating people to write.
So it was a fun treat to have my craziness quoted over at "
Musings of a Scattered Mind" a blog by new friend and self-described geek chick going by the Twitter handle: Asheyna.
Let me finish by saying this: Writers write. They can talk about writing, blog about it, dream about it, and twitter about it. But they also do it.
If ever you find yourself doing more talking, blogging, dreaming or twittering about writing than actual writing, you might want to consider how serious you are about being a writer.
Also you can never ever ever complain about not having the time to write. I bet some of you would weep and gnash your teeth if you compared word-count between twitter and your WIP, or blogging and your still-unfinish-novel.
Do I walk the walk?
Heck yeah, once I click submit I'm turning off the internet and writing. Booyah!
All this to say, Desert Companion, a really great arts and culture magazine, sent an intrepid journalist by the name of Scott Dickensheets to sit in on one of our weekly Illiterati critique sessions.
