Handy Dandy Excuses for Not Writing

1. It's three weeks between meetings of my writing group, and I just presented at the last meeting, and I only have to present every other meeting, so I have six weeks until I have to produce something, which is loads of time. Why push myself?
2. I'm really busy at work. I get home, and the last thing I want to do is something that requires more focus, more discipline, and more structure.
3. My volunteer position as webmaster for the Seattle Chamber Music Society took up a lot of my time, getting the newly redesigned web site live in time for them to start selling tickets for their summer festivals.
4. TiVo.
5. Netflix.
   
6. I haven't felt inspired.
7. I haven't felt motivated.
8. I've used the above as lame excuses.

I know, having been a musician and a music educator, that neither inspiration nor motivation is required to jumpstart the creative process. It's all about hard work. If I could learn to treat writing like my second job, to discipline myself to set aside certain regular hours for writing, whether it's one hour every evening or two hours each on Saturday and Sunday, or whatever, that would be a good thing.

In Poetics of Music Stravinsky wrote the following:

One does not contrive an accident: one observes it to draw inspiration therefrom. An accident is perhaps the only thing that really inspires us. A composer improvises aimlessly the way an animal grubs about. Both of them go grubbing about because they yield to a compulsion to seek things out.

One may not contrive accidents, but one certainly doesn't stumble upon them by watching TiVo!

So if I don't have this compulsion, does that mean I'm not a writer? Maybe I'm just not serious about it. Does that matter? Do I need to get serious? If I don't get serious, what will it cost me?

Well, one thing that will happen no matter what is I'll go on living, getting older, and having nothing to show for it. Is that really what I want?

So how do I break out of patterns that provide short-term pleasure but no long-term reward, that offer comfort but not satisfaction, that are easy but don't lead to a better life or a better community or a better planet?

<irony>If anyone reading this has an easy answer, let me know.</irony>