I have read a lot of books about writing. A lot.

Case in point: in the center of the above image is the stack of books about writing and creativity that I own, have read (sometimes twice) and have marked up all the brilliant bits. On the left, the smaller stack represents a few of those I have yet to read or finish. And on the right, those are the books I have written.

OH YEAH. THERE ARE NONE OF THOSE.

The writing process is very easy to read about. It’s also easy to enjoy the perfect fruit of someone else’s labors when you sit down at the table with an Agatha Christie mystery, a Mary Karr memoir or even a Calvin and Hobbes Treasury. The actual writing? That seems to be the alchemy of some other gifted, bewitching and lucky person.

I have discovered, it’s not really that magical, after all. When the books tell you to sit your butt in the chair every day, to show up at the laptop without fail, that the muse arrives when you do, there’s something so obvious there that they don’t say it for fear of sounding redundant.

If you don’t write, nothing gets written.

In other words, sit down and write. (Unless you’re Thomas Wolfe. At 6’6″, he wrote on top of the refrigerator. You get the point.)

Okay, okay, so writing a bunch of words on the page does not a book make. There’s re-writing, editing, submitting, crying, conditional acceptance, re-editing, re-re-writing. And even after all that, it’s a crap shoot – well, so I’ve been told.

Because I haven’t really done all that other stuff. Oh, I have started to write a lot more, but it’s all just a words and words and words in a Word file, right now.

So I started this blog because it’s part of the advice that many seasoned writers give. 1. Write the words. 2. Put them out there. However, whenever.

(This is where I insert the apropos Wayne Gretzky quote about missing 100% of the shots you don’t take.)

The NHL ain’t taking me – at my age and, let’s face it, with this (female) bod, there is no hope. But I can still work with the metaphor. There are many things that age does not preclude me starting: knitting, sky-diving, travelling, moving…and writing.

My new mantra that I’ve been whispering to myself lately is: It’s not too late. All I need is my laptop, a Wayne Gretzky bobble-head and a very short refrigerator.

No, seriously. Butt in chair, write the words. It’s not too late.