Jobs, Responsibilities and Big Girl Panties

by Janis Patterson

Hope all of you had a wonderful and calorie-filled Thanksgiving! Ours was quiet and simply splendid. I even took a week off from writing… from the computer itself. No email, no games… and my kitchen has never been so clean! We had a lovely and incredibly delicious dinner at my sister-in-law’s with my mother-in-law and aunt-in-law and a lazy afternoon of conversation and multiple desserts. God did indeed bless me with my in-law family, and I am intensely grateful because mine is pretty much all gone. (Now if He could just make holiday calories not stick to my ribs and other portions of my anatomy…)

Anyway, back to the business of writing! During my computer hiatus I did a lot of thinking and enjoying old memories and a long holiday phone conversation (normally I loathe telephones, much prefer email) with a friend of many years. She is a gifted and somewhat well-known actress in regional theatre, now semi-retired, and as we talked for some reason my memory dredged up another conversation from a number of years ago. I had just submitted a book right on deadline (I always prefer to be early) which had probably been the hardest, most miserable writing experience I had ever had. The book just didn’t gel, I could not deal with the characters, the plot that had seemed so perfect (and which worked well on paper but not in execution) just didn’t work… and I had a deadline. Deadlines are great motivators, and I got the book done.

How, my friend asked in wonder, had I managed to do that? How could I create without an overwhelming inspiration?

It was my turn to wonder. After all the performances she had done, the plays she had appeared in, the various roles she had created, I asked, had she never done one on technique alone?

She said no… not, at least, the entire part. Some performances she had started on technique alone, but she swore that once it had gotten running it the inspiration had clicked in. Some times, she confessed, she had let her understudy play the part because she simply could not summon the involvement she had to have.

I don’t understand that kind of thinking. If one is a professional one gets the job done. One doesn’t have to wait for a mental green light or an overwhelming ‘feeling’.

She did not appreciate that sentiment when I expressed it to her by simply saying I was a professional. Writing is a job. While it is wonderful when it happens, one does not need inspiration to do a job. You just sit down, put on your big girl panties and start writing. Put one word after another. It doesn’t make any difference if you have to change them later, you are writing. You are doing your job.

The best piece of writing advice I ever heard was said by the wildly successful Nora Roberts. “Write the book, even if it’s garbage. You can fix garbage. You can’t fix a blank page.”

In other words, be a professional. If you’re a writer, you write. You don’t wait for inspiration or magical insight or anything else. You do your job and you write.