on April 24, 2015
Earlier this week, I watched as my cat Toby went through his morning routine. ‘Meow Meow Meow!’ until we feed him, brushing up against our legs, then slowly crunching away on his variety pack of kibbles. He’s probably half-finished before he thumps outside to do whatever it is he does for 20 minutes, then promptly comes back in, plays in the water, drinks it and then begs for his food to be uncovered so he can finish eating. Every day. Three times a day.
This is how writers should write. Mostly. With a process, with training. I can be sporadic in my writing and I have no doubt I’m the only one! But imagine what it would be like if we each trained our writing brain that after we got up and had our coffee and walked the dog, and thought about what to write, we actually wrote.
And later, after lunch when we’d answered mid-day emails, we wrote again. Then before bed, after dinner and the family is winding down, we picked up our pens for a third time. What could we accomplish with a brain trained to write and longing to write? So when you are out to lunch with friends during your ‘normal’ writing time, your brain would eventually say, ‘Hey! I’m supposed to be writing right now – what are you doing?’
Toby is a 16 lb. black and white creature of habit, who doesn’t always think things through as he runs into walls, but he knows what his body needs and he takes actions to meet them.
Do we?
Food for thought! Nice post, Joy.
Toby has a good approach. My problem is that I obsess when I write, doing nothing else until sated. It’s difficult to be able to devote the amount of time that generally takes me to get to the sated end. So perhaps I’ll adopt the Toby Method for a bit. A series of hit-and-runs. Good job, Toby.