Time to Write

by Jen Payne, author, Sleeping with Ghosts

Did you know that Picasso created more than 50,000 works of art, but only about 100 of those are considered masterpieces? That’s less than 1% of his work!

I think about that little fact every April, when I attempt to write a poem a month for NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month). There aren’t a lot of masterpieces, for sure, but a few have been published. So there’s that.

Of course, lots of folks will point out the averages — ONE percent?!? And you’ll never be at a loss for angsty advice about being a writer. Ernest Hemingway said “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Robert DeNiro considers a writer on a good day to be “isolated, neurotic, caffeine-addled, crippled by procrastination, consumed by feelings of panic, self-loathing, and soul-crushing inadequacy.”

Oh my. Does it have to be that painful?

I’ve been privy to lots of conversations about writing lately. I don’t have time, they say, or my work isn’t good enough, I can’t stop editing, what will people think?

I like what writing guru Natalie Goldberg advises: “Say what you want to say. Don’t worry if it’s correct, polite, appropriate. Just let it rip.”

That’s the approach I go by every April — just write. I suppose it’s the approach I take all year long. Just do it, like Nike says.

Author Neil Gaiman suggests, “This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done. It’s that easy, and that hard.”

Exactly, it’s that easy and that hard. I think it’s kind of like the lottery slogan: you can’t win if you don’t play. How are you ever going to write a masterpiece if you’re not writing all along?

Photo by Wallace Chuck.

This essay was originally featured in the WOW! Women on Writing national Blog Tour for my book Sleeping with Ghosts: Poems & Musings.