Class prep

As I sit here preparing for a class I am teaching tomorrow night on column writing I realized that if I put as much time into the prep of my manuscript as I do my teaching materials I could have written a book on column writing. And I could probably have written it three times over by now.

I have been teaching this class for close to five years and it was the teaching of it that prompted me to contact the local newspaper and pitch a column idea to them. It started out as a monthly piece (which I wrote for free) then they requested it become twice a month (and they were paying me) and now it is a weekly column (for which I still get paid).

In some writing arenas I am more than willing to "put myself out there" send in a query and let the chips fall where they may. But for some reason when it comes to penning my novel or pulling together information for a non fiction writing book, I feel like I can't breath. I grab for the brown paper bag and take a few quick pulls of air from there just to get calmed down from the fear. I can't figure out if it's the fear of actually completing it or the fear of not completing it at all that makes me do nothing.

If I am teaching this class I should be selling (or offering to sell) the students a book that they can take home with them for future reference. Something that expands on what I have offered up as words of wisdom in an eight hour session. What's holding me back? I still can't figure it out but I will sit here with my cup of hot chocolate and ponder for a while longer.

Comments

[Robbi Hess]

Boy, if someone wanted to sign up to be my "teacher" (ie. my kick-me-in-the-seat-of-the-pants) to get it done I would gladly turn in my homework!

I find I sit down to work/write something that isn't actually paying the bills today and I convince myself that I "need" to do the other work first and my book sits untouched, gathering dust.

How do other writers deal with this, I wonder?

Robbi

[Tom]

Hi Robbi,

Boy does that form of block sound familiar. Then there's the "I'm to busy with work and mowing the lawn" version. And all the dozens of others.

For your version, would it help if you asked someone to be your "teacher" and give you an assignment for, say, the chapter outline and first chapter with a deadline, to be turned in to your "teacher" on ______? And chapter 2 the next week? And so on?

In the end, though, writers have to make the writing at least equally important with anything and everything else in their lives, all those necessary tasks that get done somehow.

And then keep getting the small chunks of writing done, until ooops, there's a manuscript in front of you.

(Don't tell them yet that that's the easy part ...)

Tom