PR contributor Tina Tocco has this to say about writing:
I had a writing instructor who told our class something like this: “If you can write only on sunny days, or while listening to the rain fall, or when everything in your life is in order, that’s fine. But you can never be a professional writer.” I wrote “My Muse” years before I met this instructor, but her comment has never left me. I think it’s because we’re of like mind about writing — it’s a show-up-plunk-your-butt-in-the-chair-and-get-it-done activity. If you ask me, waiting for a muse is too much like keeping your fingers crossed, and you can’t type with crossed fingers. I’ll stick with persistence until my vision blurs (and it usually does).
If you like gathering personal pieces from other people’s writing lives, browse through Passages North’s Writers on Writing Series. They’ve got two years’ worth — everything from “why I wrote my first high school poem” to the benefits of crossing genres to the motive behind founding a literary journal. They’re the kinds of things writers will tell you after you’ve sat across the workshop table from them for two or three semesters. And Passages North is always on the lookout for more, so if you have something to share (and what writer doesn’t?), head over to submissions. That story you’ve been hanging onto about your fourth grade book report just might be next week’s perfect installment.