Write, dammit!

I've been talking a lot about writing. I've also been writing a lot.

Ariel Gore, authoress of the Hip Mama Survival Guide is also the author of How to Become A Famous Writer Before You're Dead which is the best book about writing that I've seen recently.

It's written in my language. She uses the word "fuck" a lot. Which I respect in a writer.

In it, Ms. Gore starts off by saying that A Room of One's Own is fabulous, but you don't necessarily need it to become a writer.

I joined a writing group a couple of months ago that met this weekend.

I shared that I have been writing - a lot. One of the other members asked me how. How do I find time to write? I'll tell you what I told her. It's going to be different for all of us.

I am pathologically punctual. If I need to be somewhere at 10, I'll be sure to be there by 9:30. It's an illness. I spend a lot of time in waiting rooms or sitting in my car waiting for my appointments. This is where I write. I take my journal everywhere, which may not be the smartest thing ever but, nevertheless, I have a compunction to write. And write I do.

I write stories, I write notes, I write complete nonsense. Usually, after I get out of my support group, I pull over to the side of the road at least twice on the way home to write down things that I think about - which, by the way, is a lot safer than trying to write in traffic.

Trust me on this one.

Some people get up a half-hour before their kids to write. Some people write during their lunch hour. Some people write drunk at midnight but they write.

One of the most helpful things in the book so far is, if "Write a novel" is last on your list of things to do, you'll never get to it. We never get to the last thing on our lists of things to do because the kids need feeding and the laundry needs doing and I'm sure the side yard needs weeding and I need a new pair of gym shoes....and the novel never gets written.

Ariel Gore is funny and she is a hard-hitter. At one point she calls those of us who are writers in our own minds but actually never put words to paper, horrible names.

But we can take it, because she's right.