Maxim Monday #3: Labour
I’m going to leave the intro from MM #1 pinned here for new readers. For today’s new post, scroll down below the photo:
By way of user’s guide, I’m reprinting a snippet from a post I put up this past spring about teaching writing:
“All those rules we’ve all read...any maxims we’ve stuck to our workspaces or screened on our mugs or chanted like prayers...they’re exactly as good as the last thing they helped you get done. Many of them are brilliant. A few of them are true. All of them are wrong.”
Which is just to say, take these for what they are: encouragement; company; one long-timer’s half-sketched map to his own Writer Island, where he takes the air and scours the woods and abandoned buildings and works the days away and may or may not discover buried treasure and may or may not recognize it if and when he does. Hope they help you find yours.
(Also just to say that I’ve eaten all the words left in the refrigerator. Delicious, of course, so sweet and so cold. But every time I open that door, there seem to be more in there, so you should go and check…)
Sometimes I’ll be taking on or adding to or denying longstanding writing truisms. Sometimes I’ll be offering my own.
Hope at least a few of these, over the course of the year, inspire or prod or spur or enrage you enough to get you back out there and digging. If you have thoughts, share ‘em!
And if you do find inspiration here, and you want to show appreciation, please share that somewhere, too. Or click this little purple button, if you’re so inclined
Monday Maxim #3: Labour
Writing is a labour of love.
It is labour I love.
It is labour.
Take days off. Meaning, away from the computer, which is as close as you’re going to get to “off” in this biz. Go help other hardworking people in your life switch off, or give them the break they deserve.
Your loved ones will thank you for it. Your neglected hobbies will thank you for it. And here’s the sneaky little trade secret:
Your writing will thank you for it.