My Writing Monster is a hungry one. She demands a type of selfishness, a devotion that requires me to shut out the rest of the world and all the other things I ‘should be’ doing. She devours my most valuable resource, time. She needles me when I’m driving, throwing images and ideas in my head when I can’t stop to record them. And then other times, when I sit in front of the screen, ready to unleash her, she sleeps. She has an illicit love affair with adverbs. I know they’re wrong, but she just keeps forcing them on me. She’s a hard one to tame, my Monster.

Following through on the commitment to write is the hardest part for me. Some people say you have to treat it like a job, but I don’t think that’s true. I think you have to treat it like a relationship. Sometimes you have to work at a relationship, but you do it because you love the other person. Ay, there’s the rub, though. The struggle is working at your relationships with people and your relationship with your writing when both demand so much time.

This week my goal is balance between my regular life and my writing life.

Playing now: The Weight, Thrice