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Charlotte Rains Dixon  

Writing is Never Done (A Love Letter)

As you read this on Sunday morning, I’ll be in Astoria, gearing up for the welcome dinner for the Feast of the Senses writing workshop. I’ll be thinking about the workshop, and how best to make sure it is useful and inspiring for participants. And I’ll be thinking about my writing—my current WIP, a rewrite of the first draft of a novel that is so massive it hardly counts as a rewrite at all. More like a brand-new project. It has my brain engaged, the novel-writing synapses firing.

I’ll be pondering how, exactly, I can make that scene that has too much narrative in it work. How to deepen the character arc of the protagonist. Where to set the first big love scene. And I’ll be thinking about when I can carve out a moment to work on it.

Because, when you are a writer, your work is never done.

This is true of other occupations, both paid and unpaid, of course. Housework comes to mind, along with the old outdated saw, a woman’s work is never done. Well, cleaning is never done anyway.

But writing is different, because cleaning doesn’t constantly occupy your mind. (Okay, at least it has never taken up much space in my mind.) When you are a writer, there’s a constant yearning to write. Right? A constant pull to shut out the real world and enter the world of your imagination—putting words on the page.

I imagine this experience is quite similar for other creative activities, like painting, for instance. I do know I ponder knitting (what should I make next? How will that ribbing look? Should I use garter stitch instead?) often. But it doesn’t hold the huge amount of space in my brain that writing does.

And sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have the kind of job that you leave at work. That doesn’t come home with you. That you turn the light out on and don’t think about until the next morning. That doesn’t nag and pull at you. The kind of job where you can come home, cook dinner and sit in front of the TV without so much as a you should be writing kind of thought.

Because when you are a writer, the thought you should be writing is always just below the surface. You’re always aware of it. Brief moment to relax? You should be writing! Appointment canceled? You should be writing! Day off? You should be writing! I can’t imagine what it would be like to have the kind of life where this pull to write is the constant drumbeat of my life.

And honestly? I don’t think I really want to.

Prompts

Here is your prompt of the week:

No matter how hard I work it never all gets done.

Happenings

France 2019—Would you like to study writing in the south of France with me? You can! Find all the details here. Space is filling up fast so hop on over and check it out!

Facebook Group

And of course, don’t forget to join the Facebook group if you haven’t already. I post lots of good links and often we get some good conversation going.

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