Writers on not writing

I hear it all the time. I experience it all the time. We're writers only by self-knowledge, not, at the moment, by virtue of putting words on paper and creating something. In some ways, we're like dry addicts. A sober addict is at peace about not using her drug of choice; a dry one doesn't use, but rarely thinks of anything else.

That's me, for now. Oh, I do have occasional spurts. Something -- guilt? shame? disbelief? -- drags me to the computer and the novel-in-progress, and a few -- good, but few -- pieces get added into what I've already written. Yep, that's right: on my spurts, I usually start from the very beginning to "get back into it." I do get back into it, but I don't much get on with it.

I look at my friend Bruce Bennett, a very skilled and published poet, for inspiration. Bruce writes every single day. Well, I do, too, if emails count, or journal entries. But they don't, really, if what I'm attempting to do is develop the kind of discipline that is apt to produce finished pieces. And that's what I say I want. In fact, that's the predominent theme in my journal: puzzlement over why I don't do what needs doing to finish a novel that is in fact very important to me.

Well? At least I'm thinking about it. Constantly. Just like a dry junkie.