Blah and more blah.

Blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah ? Blah. Blah blah blah?? Blah. Blah.

There's some writing tutor person, or maybe just a writer - who's dead now - who wrote a book about writing, and about how to get unblocked, apparently, and in it she (?) says (I'm just remembering being told this, I don't have to book to look it up) that you should start by just writing whatever is in your head for 10 minutes every day, first thing in the morning; (before you you anything??? Surely you have to pee and have a cup of tea...but no, she says first thing. Which means hitting your alarm clock and reaching for a pencil and sitting upright and maybe putting on a lamp, if it's the winter, and shuffling around with pillows and a notebook and splat, throwing words out of your subconscious onto the page. And that's okay, if you're organised to do it, and if you don't have such bad handwriting that you can't really read what it is five minutes later.).

Anyway. Some people probably get up and to that but straight onto their computer (like, never turn it off, so they just hit a key and start...) or maybe when they get more confident, they can say 'I will be at my desk and will work for 2 hours from X o'clock'; but for some people that doesn't work at all, because other things get in the way (I mean, they don't put other things aside and say it's more important to write than to pay the gas bill, or wash the sheets, or wipe dust off the furniture, or buy milk, or do their yoga exercises and have a bath.)

I suppose no rule is going to work for everyone. Or is that just an excuse? But writers are all different, when you get to know them (at least, that's what Susie says). I thought they must all be quite similar, be doing it for similar reasons etc, but she said no, some of them have no mental blocks, some of them just like being entertaining or clever, some of them are totally mental, and some of them never have any problems with it at all, never get voices in their head telling them to tidy the house or do something useful. Some of them (she says) take it for granted that what they do is great. Maybe getting paid has something to do with it. I think if nobody knows you're doing something, and nobody thanks you or gives you money, and months and months go by when they can't even read what you're writing and laugh or go 'hmmm' or something, then it must be hard to know that you're actually doing anything at all, anything that could be USEFUL or of course GREAT.

Gosh, I'm actually beginning to rant just like Susie. Maybe the writer rant thing is catching, like a virus.