Someone asked me recently how I found the time to write in my blog. I want to put this in perspective before I go into a lot of detail about my creative output.

I went on a date recently with an individual who had just lost her job, was planning to move away to grad school in five-months and expressed an interest in publishing her own blog posts as a hardcover collection by the end of the year, December 2018. She obviously had a lot on her plate and seemed to be seeking advice. I have never felt like the type of person anyone would need advice from, so this initially shocked me.

To set the tone of this post I will start with the fact that our date was bad. The food was bad, the beer was bad and the conversation sat comfortably somewhere between chitchat and public school lecture.  The only good thing to come out of this date would be this blog post, which has a lot of potential, but we’ll see where it all ends up. 

See, reader, I’ve had the idea to talk about my creative method on the blog for some time now. Lord knows every other writer in the world has been asked about their own process, so I thought I might beat the wolves to the bite.  The trouble came from not believing it would make for very interesting reading, and it was this issue that stopped me from writing about my method before. Admit it, if you sat down and saw a post that began with a monologue about which socks I wear when I sit alone in the kitchen to scribble out a bit of writing to share with you, you would skip it and go right to the stories about Cloudy Day and his detective agency.

At least, I hope you would.  I’m very proud of the way that story came out, all in all.

Now, when I went on this date I hadn’t the slightest hope that I would gain anything in the way of creative writing out of it. I suppose that just goes to show you, you never know where inspiration will spark. In fact, rule one of writing for Holding The Universe Together: You never know where inspiration will spark.

That’s a good spring board from which to launch the rest of my tale.

As I explained to my date that night, I don’t find the time to write, it just sort of comes along. I’ll be sitting at home or at work and a computer will happen to be in front of me and I will just so happen to feel like writing 800-1000 words. Honestly. I don’t think I’ve said anything so honest in my life. Some writers, very famous ones with loads of fans and published works, will tell their fans in their published works that any good writer should sit down and write at least a thousand words a day. Stephen King, in his book On Writing, explains that as you develop your skill and patience you will eventually come to a point where you are writing over two-thousand words a day.

That’s over-whelming. I tried it. One summer, the one I spent living in Alaska, I dedicated my time to writing at least one-thousand words a day. I felt great about it, I felt achieved and successful, even though all of those words are still sitting in a couple of journals near my bed at this point. As a result I did get a lot of ideas down on paper that I might never have if I hadn’t taken that time.

The problem is, it didn’t stick. It didn’t stay with me. And maybe that’s why I’m not an accomplished writer, but it’s just so… limiting. To sit and write every day with a goal in mind, it starts to feel like a chore. And suddenly writing isn’t any fun anymore.

I love to write, reader. I love it more than anything, and if I could do it with the dedication of Stephen King, believe me, I would be so happy. But I can’t. Or better yet, I don’t want to. I would rather let the moment happen, let the writing find me, rather than go hunting and searching for the writing. That sounds metaphysical and spiritual, but it’s not. I just believe that there is a time and a place when everything comes together in the right way and it doesn’t do anybody any good to go looking for that time and place.

So here I am, in front of a computer, and I am writing down ideas that have been floating around in my head for days. These ideas have been turning over in my head, mixing and mingling and becoming bigger and smaller at the same time, condensing and refining for a little over two weeks. Until now, when I find myself sitting near a computer on a rainy day, alone in my apartment ready an dedicated.

That’s how most of these stories and autobiographical collections came about. That’s how this blog came about. In its own kind of over-whelming nature, the ideas and words in my head craved an outlet.

I don’t think that my date understood the point I was trying to make. She seemed to be the type of person who focuses on the goal rather than the route while I am much more interested in the path under my feet than where it ends up. You may take this as a caution if you ever feel like going on a date with me.

In a jumbled up sort of way, there you have part one of this selection called: The Process.

I didn’t want to make it a two-part story when I sat down to write it, but now it feels like one. I certainly can’t go into the rest of my creative process in less than two-hundred words.  I will hint at the next section, though. In the next part I am going to talk about how my style has changed over time and my biggest influences as a writer. I’ll talk about what got me to this point, the advice I followed and the obstacles I’ve over-come. I’ll also try to get into the actual process of sitting down and writing for me, which will go into how I write, edit and when I know it’s ready to be published. Then I’ll talk about how it feels to share all this with anyone who happens to stumble across it and hopefully wrap the ideas I started in this blog in a neat little package.

See you for Part Two, reader. And as always, thank you so much for dropping in and reading.