A Good Tip

Publisher’s Weekly posted 5 Writing Tips Rrom Chelsea Cain. If you haven’t read her, give her books a try. She’s a thriller writer and really good. I also think her first tip was written directly for me because I say this all the time:

1. You won’t make a living writing until you learn to write when you don’t want to. A lot of writers wait for the muse to seize them. These writers don’t get much done. Here’s a secret: writing is not always fun. If it is, you’re doing it wrong. I love to write just about more than anything, but there are times I have to force myself to sit down and work. I want to play with my daughter, or watch a movie with my husband, or go outside on the nicest day of the year. But if writing is going to be your job, you have to treat it like a job. And that means that you don’t get to take the day off just because you’re “not feeling it.” This is what separates the writers who make it from the writers who don’t. Get your butt in your chair, and make yourself write. Do it every day.

Whenever people talk about their writing muse I am stumped. If I waited around to want to write or for it to be the right time to write or for the muse to knock on the door, I would have written exactly ZERO books. There is always something more fun to do or something else that has to be done. Always. I am the worst house cleaner on the planet and I would rather dust the entire house than write some days.

So, yeah. What she said.