Writing takes time and courage. But, is there a sure-fire approach that will maximize productivity? I’m not sure.  Unfortunately, I don’t have an organized practice – or even a routine that I can easily describe. Deadlines are always a great inspiration and get me to the desk more frequently than anything else. I know I’m not a morning writer. That’s when I prefer to read. I build up to writing during the day and hopefully start in the afternoon.

It’s easier for me to see what distracts me from writing. Today, I’m feeling dispossessed, as if I can’t settle down and feel at home in the world. I’ve spent most of the day roaming around my house, picking up random books, wondering if I should give some of them to the library book sale. If I can sit down and start typing, I know that I might get through this odd feeling of having elusive, abstract, uncomfortable ideas. I might begin to understand and tease apart my sense of absence and become present. As David Whyte says in Consolations, “we become visible and real when we give our gift and stop waiting for the gift to be given to us. We wake into our lives again…”

Whyte also says that most of us feel besieged: by events, by people, and even by our own imagined creative possibilities. He suggests starting the day with a “don’t do” list rather than a “to do” list so that you have the highest likelihood of getting to your writing.

Life happens – birth, death, an accident, a financial setback – and may take you far away from the page for an extended time, but you can begin again. Sit down, turn off your critical editor and write a sentence, a paragraph, perhaps a page. Natalie Goldberg says in Writing Down the Bones that every time we sit down to write we must come back to the beginner’s mind.

“There is no security, no assurance that because we wrote something good two months ago, we will do it again. Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we ever did it before. Each time is a new journey with no maps.”

Writing is delicious, messy, and challenging. It’s worth all the effort it takes to make it happen.