Getting Started

My friend Christy sucks. She always makes us write and eat salad. She’s like the Suzanne Sommers of our Three's Company writing group. Soon, she’ll be a millionaire off of her thighmaster-equivalent inventions.

I like thinking about writing and reading about writing so much more, so much, much, much more than actually writing. I like having written, but I hate the writing part sometimes.

I think it's the starting writing that is the worst. The only things that can reliably motivate me to work are shame or rage. Rage is so exhausting, I don’t know what shame is, it's just so shamey. Oh yeah, fear too. Fear is a great motivator. For a while anyway.

It crushes my magical thinking optimism when I take my friends' advice to "Just do the next right thing" and then nothing happens. I need results, people. Instant happiness.