Fiction author Robin Brande talks about writing, reading, and other vital matters

I say yes. I’ve been thinking about this since reading Heather Harper’s post a few days ago.

For about the past eight years I’ve been doing a practice called Morning Pages. It’s one of the fundamentals of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way–a book I highly recommend (okay, insist) that every writer in the world buy and start reading right now. It, more than any writing text, is responsible for teaching so many of us to get over ourselves and not make writing such a BIG DEAL and just learn to put our words on paper without a lot of melodramatic angst and procrastination.

Morning Pages is the practice of rolling out of bed, grabbing some coffee if you’re normal, sitting somewhere with a few sheets of loose leaf paper in front of you, and writing three long-hand pages of whatever garble is in your head. Some mornings it’s nothing but lists of things I need to do. Other days it’s brilliant plot points that came to me right as I woke up. But usually it’s a mixture of “this is what happened yesterday, this is what I need to do today, and oh, by the way, I had this epiphany about my work/my friends/my life/switching brands of oat bran.”

So Morning Pages start the writing day for me, but that’s not enough. Now that I have the blog, I find I need to exercise these particular muscles every day, too, before I can finally settle down to writing fiction.

Because what I get from the blog is different from Morning Pages. You–yes, you–aren’t reading my Morning Pages. (And trust me, you never will.) You aren’t sending me comments about what I write in the dark of the morning and either calling me on my bull_ or telling me you agree, or–best of all–entertaining me with your wit and wisdom.

I write the blog for the very selfish reason that I love to read what you write in return. I love the dialogue. I sit here in front of the computer for hours every day and night, working on whatever novel I have in progress, and my eyes constantly wander up to the mailbox icon at the top of the screen, and when I see that one of you has chimed in I can’t wait to read what you’ve written. No pressure, but what I’m telling you is that you–yes, you–have the power to make this writer’s day. Otherwise it’s just me and dogs and the characters in my head, and while that’s a good life by any definition, it’s just a little shy of perfection.

You, dear Reader, make it perfect.

So yes, Heather, I think blogging counts as writing. And if you write back to tell me you’re glad I agree, then it also counts as a conversation.

Technorati Tags: Writing, Publishing, Blogs, Blogging, Writers, Authors, Fiction

Posted on Wednesday, September 13th, 2006 at 5:15 am under Writing . Subscribe to responses: RSS 2.0 Comment Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.