REASONS WRITERS DO THINGS

No one has explained why a writer must take a certain amount of time each day other than, "it is a job like any other, if you were going to the office every day, you would spend eight hours, etc." But writing is not like any other job. No one has told me the reason why I have to increase my vocabulary to at least a grade twelve university level other than,"you do not want to sound childish." No one has told me why I should not let my family or friends read my work and critique it. No one has told me why I should keep all my writing books, and other equipment in the same room and have a private room or time to practice my craft. So I think I had better explain why.

You need a writing space with your equipment, books, et cetera on hand, because if you have your books, for instance, downstairs, everytime you run to get that obscure reference book, you lose valuable writing time. You also save on leg power. Someone may take your absence as an okay for them to get on the computer and play a game.

Your vocabulary has to be more than looking up in a dictionary because you have to know the nuances of the word in such a way that they became second nature. It does, also, make people respect you and expect more than a story of your tragic life when your father locked you in the closet even though he never did those things and was the nicest man in your city.

You need a certain amount of time because you must see at least a page or several paragraphs completed, not only a sentence. In connection, you should have a particular time period, preferably an hour at least, with no interruptions because if someone bugs you during your alloted writing period,you cannot concentrate because you are thinking that any moment now the phone will ring, the husband will want to play his game, the dog has to go out, and so forth. In other words, eventually you expect to be interrupted. It is sort of like those rechargeable batteries. If you stop too soon, the battery life decreases and you wind up writing, "See Dick Run." instead of "As I entered the room, I observed Mrs. Marvin, her head attached in a rather strange angle and her eyes glazed over — knowing that someone in the house had killed her, I immediately phoned the police, et cetera, et cetera.

You do not let friends critique your work, because they have different tastes in writing and that reflect on their judgements. In other words, they are asking, "why does she or he write about this lovely family and how they got to America?" "I love Romances." and fail to see if you used the passive voice a little too often, the hero in your story suddenly changed his name in mid stream from Barney to Howard, or other blunders.

You do not let family critique your work, because they confuse your writing with whatever you did wrong and have seen you on your bad days.

You only tell that you are writing, not the exact detail of plot, city, or name because in the first case, you might, say, suddenly decide to change to science fiction and would you not be embarrassed!

You do not give a copy to your friend because she may be a helpfuL aunt. What a helpful aunt does is to show the copy to as many of her friends as possible. (She is glad to meet a real writer ) Eventually it may wind up being stolen by an unscrupulous person masquerading as a friend who says, "Oh I am not interested" and then steals it from the coffee table, dresser drawer, and has it published under his or her own name.

As for me, I got sick and tired of people asking, "Why do you need this and could you not get, et cetera, et cetera." I thus to write it down. Hope that satisfies everyone.