Greetings mortals, humans, bloglites and fellow blarghers, it’s morning! <Remove that exclamation mark, no mornings deserve those, they deserve a symbol of fire and caffeine and a good bed. Ugh. I’m groaning right now, but I’m still here, writing something. And that’s what today’s episode is about kids. Waiting to write.

Dun dun dun!!!

It’s so common, sitting around, lounging, watching cat videos until inspiration strikes. I have a secret for you, inspiration plays the waiting game too, if you sit around waiting for it, it waits for you to get writing. Waiting is good only for one thing, waiting, using up time. You can’t wait a novel in to completion, you have to write it. Get over it. Stop waiting for perfections, new flash, it’s never going to be perfect, even after editing. Handfuls of New York Times best selling authors will and have said that. Mistakes happen, not everyone will love and adore every line of your novel. So what? It happens. The perfect, heck, even great lines are for first drafts, they’re for editing. But you can’t edit a novel you haven’t written. And you can’t write one by waiting. But sure, go ahead, try, I mean what do I know? Show me how it’s done, wait it out.

Waiting will make you in expert in waiting. The muse doesn’t show up at random, they show up when you do. Writing is like any other craft, you get good at it, better at it, by doing it! Not by waiting and dreaming about being good at it. Practice makes almost perfect, because in writing, in art, there is no perfect. Sorry.

That’s a good thing, perfection is boring, it means there is an acceptable top end level. And that’s boring because if you could hit perfect, that means there’s a standard, at that point everything would start to sound and read the same. That’s against the nature of writing. Everyone has a unique, singular voice, start writing and find yours. You can’t dig up treasure without getting to work, shoveling up the sand and busting your rump.

Waiting does one thing, it puts off your writing till later. Wonderful, let me know when later comes around. I’ve tried finding on the calendar, I couldn’t. Maybe it’s just me. You, you of course must have some secret knowledge of where to find later. I don’t.

It’s why so many authors have daily goals, word counts to hit, or page counts. Some are easier than others, but the principle is to keep you writing constantly, hammering away at completing a work. Because here’s the truth, if you want to make a career out of this, you have to start treating it like one. That’s not a bad thing. I love writing. I hate writing a certain amount. Guess which one wins though? Writing. So I do it, I make it a fun challenge, and you know what? The muse responds to that challenge. Push yourself and you will grow. People grow into promotions and new roles in life, don’t they? Writers grow into new challenges.

But no, no, it’s cool, wait around. It’s awesome. Sure… Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying burn yourself out, by all means, take time off when you need to. You know you better than anyone. If you need to take time off, do it. But learn the difference between when you’re taking time off to help you, and when you’re just procrastinating. Writing novels is not writing college essays. You can’t pop an adderall and pull it out of your butt at the last second. You can only do one of those. Psst, the right answer is pulling it out your butt, because at the end of the day, every author is doing that at some point in there novel.

But I mean, if you’re writing a book about waiting, go get some practice. I’m sure waiting to write it will make you an expert in writing it…Wait? How does that work? Hm…

Most people wait out of this fear that the first words they write in their first, their ROUGH draft, aren’t going to be perfect. Secret time. They’re not going to be perfect even if you did wait. Writing is like sculpting. You have to get that lumpy mass of clay before you can shape it into something perfect. A great many of successful authors have said that the best authors are the best editors. It’s not about making the sculpture perfect the first time, it’s about polishing and chiseling it afterwards. Learn that writing is not a one step thing. You don’t write, and then done. When you learn that, you’ll learn to stop waiting to write. Write, get it done, edit later. You’re first words are never going to be as good as you want them to. I guarantee your first spoken words weren’t Shakespeare or Chaucer.

Get over yourself and write. Stop waiting. WRITE!