Thoughts About Writing Warm-Ups: GAHHH!

Part of the problem about me getting going with writing is that I have this need to talk about the process just to “warm up.” I mean, writing warm-ups is generally encouraged anyway, but I also feel this inner pull to explain my characters and ideas and settings and TALK about my writing to my reader, which I know is not a thing that storytellers do really.  You just tell the story and if you want to stop in the middle and offer a little CS Lewis aside, that is one thing, but you don’t warm up with this big explanation and a bunch of disclaimers, which is what I absolutely WANT to do.

It is utterly boring and no one would ever want to read it such drivel, which means, I don’t write it because I simply cannot drag myself to write words that will never ever be read.  I just can’t. And that deprives me of my very necessary drivel-purge-warm-up and then I can’t write the potentially decent story that would follow the stupid disclaimer.  So I don’t. No readers=no warm up=no story=no writing.

I know I’m going about this way backwards, but it’s the truth.

It’s like the whole shower gym problem.  I cannot abide the notion of getting ready at the gym. The whole process of packing up a bunch of stuff to go to another building to exercise and get all yucky and shower and then get ready and then have to pack up all your  sweaty clothes or bathing suit or whatever. I KNOW that I am thinking backwards about leaving the gym 2 hours later with my bag of sweaty stuff and hairdryer when I could have been at home or where I want to be the whole time. Who even cares by that point?! So much effort that isn’t even the actual exercise.  (It should be said that I hate exercise and cannot be convinced by any means that it is better than reading a book or sleep because it just IS NOT.) Why!?! Just why!?! That the existence of a building with equipment and facilities could convince people to travel from their homes to do something unpleasant is baffling. Baffling.

Baffling is how I feel about writing for no one.  Baffled.

I have never really journaled. I have stacks of journals that have been given to me and most of them are blank or have a few pages filled in with dates from January where I ambitiously aspired to chronicle my thoughts or record my prayers or take notes at church or–eventually just was casting around for something on which to write a grocery list or to do list.

But, oddly, I can blog.  Even though I never really wanted to write non-fiction and still don’t, I successfully blogged for several years and was decently good and faithful with it. I had a few readers and followers. People liked my writing which made me want to write more and so I did. And I would always say that then I would write my novel. But I didn’t. Because you can’t write a novel on a blog.

This isn’t 1890 and you can’t publish a novel episodically as if you were Twain or Alcott. OR can you? You can’t publish a chapter a week? Except a lot of writers do. I’ve read some fan fiction that works like that. But what about just posting all the weird drivel and warm-ups and weird nonsensical drafts and EVERYTHING? 

I don’t know. I really don’t. But I do know that this warm-up was kind of fun to write because it might be read and MAYBE, just the fact that this could be read might give me an inkling of interest in sticking with this crazy habit to get the durn novel started.

And for those wise friends who want to point out that publishing my writing here on the blog negates my chances of ever getting a real publisher to “republish” it, I would like to say, “Pffft. You may go shower at the gym.”