“Honor is a funny word, a loaded word, a difficult word. It is not a word to toss around lightly. But I’m willing to bet that you place it at the very top of your list of words with personal meaning. I bet you love it, believe in it, and aspire to it. Live that way, then! Honor the fact that you believe in honor and construct your writing life around it.”
“Honoring your writing space means that if you are embroiled in tasks, dramas, crises, and errands, you ring a bell at your appointed time and let all of that go. You enter your writing space clear-headed and unencumbered. If you are tired from your day job, you splash water on your face; if you are exhausted from your mate’s chatting, you take an aspirin and a quick nap; if you have a hundred things to do before you get to write, you put that long list aside and remind yourself what honor means.”
“You honor your writing space by recovering, if you are an addict. You honor your writing space by becoming an anxiety expert, a real pro at mindfulness and personal calming. You honor your writing space by affirming that you matter, that your writing life matters, and that your current writing project matters. You honor your writing space by entering it with this mantra: “I am ready to work.” You enter, grow quiet, and vanish into your writing.”
“If you live your life as you intend it to be lived, you will find yourself in your writing space thousands of times. Sixty years of writing, two hours a day, translates to better than 50,000 hours in your writing space. Squander some of those hours—we all must. Indulge a bad mood for some of those hours—we all do. Write poorly during some of those hours—there’s no way around that. But try your best to honor your writing space. That’s the key intention.”
– Eric Maisel, in A Writer’s Space: Make room to dream, to work, to write
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