CE Murphy Talks To Us

It was hard, and she tried to talk me out of one of my precious blogging ideas–she didn’t succeed–but CE Murphy is here at last.

“Blogging is hard,” I said to May while I was trying to come up with a topic for today’s guest blog. “Let’s go shopping!”

Inevitably, this led to a discussion of shoes. This is inevitable only because I accidentally turned May on to Duo Boots last year, and while I am not *generally* weak in the face of shoes, I turn out to be very weak in the face of boots that will fit my sturdy calves.

The truth is, actually, writing is hard, whether it’s blogging (me, I keep a journal, because blogging to my mind is more topical and focused than a journal) or writing books. It requires a certain discipline, ’cause at the end of the day nobody but you is making you do it.

That’s one of the hardest bits of being a professional writer. I took solitaire off my work computer (which is not hooked up to the internet) about six months ago, because when writing was hard going I
was spending hours and hours losing games instead of working my way through the hard bits. It’s soooo much easier to do anything other than write. Clean the kitchen, clean the kitty litter, go for a walk, aaaaanything at all.

But it has to be done. One way or another, if you want to be a professional writer, you must write. No way around that one, I’m afraid. You do whatever it takes to get yourself into the chair: word wars (a battle with someone else to see who can write the most words in 30 minutes!), a promise that you can quit “after 100 (or 200, or 300, or…) words”, a chocolate bar with your name on it (though you better put that at the end of a 3 mile walk, because writing is a sedentary job!), look at your looming deadlines, get up early, stay up late, write on the commute; a friend of mine says if you have time to watch TV, you have time to write. It’s a matter of making choices, and that’s more difficult than it seems. Even for me, who’s been writing full time for more than three years now, it’s not as easy as I think it should be. Many days I still have to drag myself to the keyboard to get any work done. I think that’s just part of any job, and has to be dealt with.

On the positive side, on days when the writing isn’t easy, I can always wear my knee-high, 3″ heel suede Duo Boots stilettos to work in, if I want. 🙂

CE Murphy is the author, most recently, of THE QUEEN’S BASTARD, in which she believes there is no mention at all of shoes. House of Cards was released in March, and the third book in the same series, Hands of Flame, will be released in September.