JCB's Ruminations on the Craft of Fiction #28
November 26, 2020
Today is Thanksgiving in the United States, so I want to talk about trying to write on holidays. I try to give myself the opportunity to write as often as possible, no matter what else is going on. It’s important for me to sit down at my computer in my office and spend a little bit of time every single day thinking about a story or a project, to organize my thoughts into coherent and profluent sentences. I don’t--and couldn’t--think about writing as if it were a job, something from which I should or might take a vacation, a day off, some crass social responsibility from which I'd ever seek escape or reprieve. I know other writers treat the work differently, but I can’t imagine doing anything else. I want to write or think about writing every single day. And so, late on the night of Thanksgiving, I will sit down, and I will stare at the words, and I will try to add more. There’s nothing else I could do.