16804--Welcome to Write Club...

The first rule of WRITE CLUB is you do not talk about WRITE CLUB.  Writing is about writing, not talking about writing or finding a hundred other easier to perpetrate distractions.  You have a large and important job ahead of you and only you can get it done.  Your work will be humanity's mirror.  Your work will help humanity keep from tearing itself apart for another day, even if it only serves as a distraction during the reading.

The second rule of WRITE CLUB is  you do not talk about WRITE CLUB.  See the first rule.  You're not a talker, you're a writer.  Stop trying to impress people with what you plan to do someday.  Go do it.  Don't wait for inspiration.  You're not a waiter.  You're a writer.  A writer writes to get the writing done.  It's an active, dynamic process that produces a result because you hunted it down, clubbed it and dragged it home to be your bitch.  That's when you'll take those words and put them together with the fit of a verbal jigsaw puzzle, painting a picture that only you could've made.  You don't do Show-and-Tell.  You just show and let your writing do your talking.

The third rule of WRITE CLUB is if someone says "stop", goes limp or taps out, the writing is over.  Because you weren't a real writer, anyway.  If you were, quitting would never have been an option.  Some writers seem to spill words onto the blank page with ease.  Good for them, but there's no promise that coherency and quality are going to come together with ease.  What you've undertaken is supposed to be one of the hardest endeavors known to man.  Do it anyway.  Look into yourself, go where the pain is and poke it with a hot, dull spoon.  Take what you've found there and put it on your page.

The fourth rule of WRITE CLUB is you're alone with your writing.  There's endless inputs into your raw material, churning and filtering through the magical processor atop your neck.  There can be as many helpful hands as you like proofing and editing, but between your brain and the stringing together of words into coherent art there is only you.  No one can get your work to done better than you.

The fifth rule of WRITE CLUB is write one at a time.  Focus on your goal.  Finish whatever's on your mind before going on to something else.

The sixth rule of WRITE CLUB is shirts and shoes don't matter.  You're not a fashion model.  You're a writer.  Kick off the shoes and socks.  Write naked.  Or wrap up in a parka or a blanket.  Get comfortable and get to work.

The seventh rule of WRITE CLUB is writing will go on as long as it has to.  Give it all the time it needs, but don't rewrite forever.  At some point, you need to call it finished and show it to somebody else.

The eighth rule of WRITE CLUB is if you're going to be in WRITE CLUB, you have to write.  Writing is what writers do.  It doesn't get any simpler than that.  If you're going to write then do it.  Write or die.  You can plan all you like, but you never know what'll unfold while writing until you're writing. That's not something that comes by waiting for inspiration but by just getting on with writing.  Start it.  Then, finish it.  Not half.  Not some.  All of it.  You don't know what writer's block is because that's something whiners get, not writers.  In fact, from now on, let's just call it "whiner's block".  You write every day you breathe.  You have to.  You wouldn't feel right if you didn't.  You write, therefore you are.