Barbara Claypole White
Originally published in WriteOn! Winter 2015 Issue
I'm thinking about bad writing days, because after a string of them, I’ve rewritten the lyrics to Queen’s “We are the Champions.” As I type this, I can hear Freddie Mercury singing, “Bad writing days? I've had a few ... ”
A bad BCW writing day can be anything from total lack of inspiration to sinking in endless sentences devoid of meaning or voice. I'm fanatical about voice, so that last one is a killer. And yes, I have an ongoing problem with plot. But whether it’s one bad day or (starts counting and runs out of fingers) many, the trick is to keep going, to let more writing be the cure.
Some of you know that I love to quote Sir Winston Churchill. It’s not just because I'm English; it’s because I write about courageous struggles with mental illness, and Sir Winston, bless him, battled his ‘black dog,’ dyslexia, and a speech impediment to beat the Nazis and win the Nobel Prize in Literature. What a guy. When he said, “If you're going through hell, keep going,” he was talking from experience.