The Writing Life--and Life

 DEBORAH CROMBIE: Earlier this week I read an essay by John Zeratsky, former Google designer and author of Make Time and Sprint, on how to use your calendar to design your ideal day. Having never experienced an ideal day, but still optimistic enough to think it possible, I was interested. He talks about the writing life, and about how essential it is to make time in your day for creative work, and he quotes as his inspiration Annie Dillard. In her book The Writing Life, Dillard says, "A schedule... is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.” Zeratsky goes on to explain in detail how he schedules his own time, which was both useful (I hope) and interesting.

But what really struck me in his essay was his reference to Annie Dillard's book and its effect on him. Now, I'm sure I read The Writing Life, along with with Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, and Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, all in those years when I was first putting my toe in the writing waters, thinking that I might, just maybe, be a writer someday. It was none of those books, however, that pushed me off the diving board into the deep end.

 In 1986, a writer named Natalie Goldberg published a book, her first, called Writing Down the Bones.

Her premise was that we all have it in us to write, to tell meaningful stories, if we can just unlock what is latent in our minds and memories. Her method for doing this she called Writing Practice. You sit down with the least expectations of yourself, put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and write without stopping for a designated amount of time, say, fifteen minutes.You may have sessions where all you can find to say is, "I have nothing to say," but, eventually, if you keep at it, something will surface.Writing practice is the warm-up for anything else you might want to write--it allows you to find your voice, to unlock your neural pathways.

So, I took Natalie's advice to heart. I did writing practice, and I wrote, and eventually my scribbles turned into a book, and then into more books. 

All these years later, I still do sprints when I'm writing a novel. Often, it's the only way to get unstuck, to set a timer and just sit down and write something, anything, and see where it takes you. But I'd forgotten my original inspiration--and I discovered that somewhere over the years my original copy of Writing Down the Bones had disappeared as well. I ordered myself a new copy, the 30th Anniversary edition! And I'm determined to go back to the core, to set myself writing practice every day--even if I don't manage an entire Ideal Day! (I'll let you know how that thing works out!)

REDs, are there books that inspired you in the writing life? I don't mean how-tos, as in plot or structure, etc., but books about what it is to be a writer, to live a creative life. 

And Readers, what books have inspired you, perhaps not to write, but books that have given you a blueprint for a way to live your life?