The Ways We Write

One of the most repeated pieces of advice to writers is to write every day.  A worthy goal but not always possible. Life tends to get in our way and we have to answer the call to which situation takes priority any given day.

However, writers write even when not at their keyboards tap-tapping away. Let me list just a few of the places writers are thinking about writing:

• in the shower
• checkout line at the grocery store
• in bed
• filling the dishwasher
• riding the commuter train to work
• filling the gas tank
• changing the baby's diaper
• in church during the sermon ( oh yes, it's done quite often)
• walking for exercise

We have story ideas swirling in our heads long before we sit down to write that first draft. Lines of a poem come to us at strange, and often inopportune, moments. A solution to a problem in the plot of a fiction story pops into our heads when we least expect it. 

We're writing when we do research for a story or interview someone that we will write about later. We're writing when we jot down notes to be used later. 

Even if you don't write something at the keyboard, or with pen and paper, every day, don't fret. I would bet that you're still writing in one of the ways pointed out above. Just don't stay away from the keyboard too many days in a row. Writing every day can become a habit but the reverse is also true.