I have been writing for over 30 years. I love it. It is the only thing I have ever felt comfortable doing. But I was honest, and I mean really honest, I would admit that, at times, I get lazy with my writing. I get lazy because writing, just like everything else one can do in life, can get tedious.

What does “lazy” look like in the writer’s world? Well it’s not editing correctly, (using your and you’re interchangeably) it’s using dialog that sounds like the 12 year old girl next door, (like, you know…) it’s telling your story with no regard to tense…it’s a lot of things that will bore your reader into trying to slit his/her own wrists with a Lego before vowing to never again read anything with your name on it.

Here’s a little secret that I have discovered over the years in terms of lazy writers though…lazy is as lazy does. My getting lazy actually has less to do with my actual writing and more to do with how I am living my life.  I am at my laziest when I stop showering every morning, when I have a nice sloppy pile of coffee cups on the corner of my desk because I am too lazy to move them, when I find myself typing in my boxers because, well, I simply couldn’t find any clean sweats because I have not done laundry. Laziness for the writer is like an illness that starts with the person and then bleeds through to the writing.

I admitted all that to say this…it is really important that you make your life as a writer just as important as if you were the CEO at Best Buy. You have to “arrive” at your desk after taking a shower and getting dressed, cup of coffee in hand like it is a real job. If you don’t treat your writing like a real job both you and your writing will suffer laziness. It’s easy to let it all fall by the wayside when you work from home…its home after all…whose gonna know? Well, you are gonna know, and then your writing suffers and your readers will know by the laziness in your work.

Get up every morning with purpose and hit that keyboard with the intention of doing it right. Don’t be lazy about your life or your writing because if you do the end result will be the same…more laziness.

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