Write With Urgency

I had this great idea for a post. Every night my wife and I read our daughter a couple of books before bedtime. It used to be one book, but that little sneak somehow negotiated her way into two stories a night. That’s fourteen stories a week. Sixty picture books every month. Our library receipt keeps a tally of how much money we save by checking out books rather than buying. According to them, we’ve saved over $3,000 so far this year. After reading so many books, I started picking up the pattern of what works and what doesn’t. Certain books, act as lullabies without even being sing-songy or arranged in rhyming couplets. Others have inherent beats as though each sentence were set to a percussion ensemble. It reminds me, as read these books out loud to my child, that when we read, we are also hearing. We hear an authorial voice. We hear a particular cadence and tone. What a great thing to write about, I thought. And someone else thought so too. At the bookstore, where I work weekends, a new hardback was displayed one of the tables near the front of the store. The book is about reading childrens’ books as an adult.

Yes. An entire book that contains not only my thoughts on the subject, but is well researched and expanded to fill over two-hundred pages. Oops.

I can still write my post. I still have original thoughts particularly on Bill Martin Jr.’s fantastic alphabet tale Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. But the fact that someone’s already written and published an entire manifesto on his love of childrens’ literature stung a little. More importantly, it gave me a sense of urgency.

At the time of this writing, I have two ideas for stories that I think are pretty good. These are wholly original ideas (to the extent that any idea can be truly “original,” but that’s a topic for another day). Now there is the gnawing feeling that someday I’ll be walking the aisles at work, pick up a new release, read the synopsis and go, “Hey! It’s my book!” Only, it won’t be my book. It will be the book I’ve always wanted to write but never did because of any number of excuses. In fact, if I started writing down my excuses for not finishing my book, I’d probably have enough to, you know, fill a book.

So, this is my New Year’s Resolution for late September. I should write. I should write with urgency. We all should. Anyone sitting on a story they want to tell, take some time out of each day until it’s told. NaNoWriMo is around the corner, but how about we all get a head start instead of waiting for November. Pop open the dusty laptop, crack open that moleskine journal, get a new ribbon for your antique typewriter, and get to work. Don’t stop until it’s finished. And don’t let the excuses to stop outweigh the reasons to write.