Samantha Bennett - 365 Reasons To Write

ISBN: 9781618429346 AUTHORS NOTE: I wrote this book inadvertently. By which I mean that I did not set out to create this book. But like so many artistic adventures, I found it (it found me?) along the road to something else. I was actually working on a book called The Organized Writer, and I realized about halfway through writing that book that perhaps I ought to do some research and ask other writers what organizational challenges they had faced. So I emailed 35 professional-writer friends and asked them to share their secrets with me. Since like most creative people they are exceedingly generous, they all wrote back with something interesting and unique about their process.

But there was one thing they all agreed on: the very hardest part about writing was making yourself sit down and do it. Ive noticed this, too once Im writing, its fine but before that? I will deflect, delay, wiggle, procrastinate, think of ten thousand other things I suddenly must do (reorganize the sock drawer, anyone?) and generally avoid doing anything until Im right up against my deadline. Sound familiar? I cant count how many creative people have said to me in a discouraged, confiding kind of voice, Oh, I never do anything until the last minute. Sweetheart, no one does anything until the last minute. Everyone waits. In fact, I think that waiting is actually an important part of our creative process.

We spend that time stewing, mulling, toying with ideas and we give our brain time to assemble and reassemble our thoughts so that by the time we actually sit down to write (or paint or act or sing or make ornaments or) we have some idea where were going. Nevertheless, there is still that terrible resistance. That cold voice inside us telling us we cant or we shouldnt or we oughtnt. And its so easy to put our writing off. And put it off. And put it off.

And every day that we put off creatively expressing ourselves is a day that our spirit gets a little lower, our mood a little greyer and our world a little less vibrant. Honestly, its plain depressing to put your creative vision on hold, and the longer you put it off, the worse the depression gets. Luckily, this is an easy trend to reverse. So if youve got a project youve wanted to begin, then my challenge to you and the principal message of this book is this: Spend 15 Minutes Writing Every Single Day. The 15-minute-per-day technique works for pretty much everything, by the way. Anything you are inspired to do, from needlepoint to liontaming, from losing weight to finding a lover, from learning a second language to learning to manage your stock portfolio can be accomplished or at least can be made significant progress on by spending 15 minutes a day working on it. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Prove me wrong. And I recommend making that 15 minutes the first thing you do each day before you check your email. And if you need some extra motivation, inspiration or a good, hard, loving, old-fashioned thwack upside the head, I hope this book will be of service to you. Thank you for taking the time to write today. The world needs your art. Samantha Bennett
Los Angeles, 2010