It’s a rainy April morning in Pittsburgh. If I was starting a novel that would be a boring first line, unless it was followed by this sentence: “The wet ground made it difficult to drag the body from the house to the woods without leaving tracks.”
But this isn’t the start of a novel; it’s merely the beginning of a blog site where I hope to impart a little bit of knowledge, fun and inspiration on the art and craft of writing.
First, let me start with a vision I always had of myself as the artist. It’s late at night, and I sit at an antique oak desk in front of a Royal manual typewriter. A cigarette dangles from my lips as smoke curls around my head. To my right, sits an amber-filled tumbler and to my left a filled ashtray. I sit typing madly away at the next great American novel oblivious to the late hour and the ash building on the end of my fag. This vision was in my head even before I acknowledged myself as a writer. When I finally made the leap nearly 14 years ago and actually said the words, “I am a writer,” the vision was still there although not a part of my actual reality as a writer.
I type too fast to use a manual. I no longer smoke for all the obvious reasons. And drinking and writing accomplish nothing but a hangover. However, it is that unrealistic, romantic vision that remains as I sit at a large mahogany desk with my laptop taking down words as fast my fingers can type them. The light of day brightens my office as two table lamps give a softer glow. Mozart, Beethoven, Greig and Brahms concertos play on my portable CD player. No matter the differences in the vision and the reality – one thing remains constant: I love to write.
The writing and publishing worlds are in a revolution. I’m pedaling and typing just as fast and hard as I can to keep up with the exciting changes. There are days when the actual writing part of my job seems very far away. So my two blogs (www.pczick.wordpress.com and http://www.pittsburghwriter.com) give me the opportunity to write even on the most overwhelming of days as I learn to tweet, post my status, figure out what the heck SEO means and buy domain names for reasons still unclear to me.
It’s important to always keep the simplest of reminders at the forefront of my consciousness and so it is a good way to begin this blog site.
It’s so simple, yet one when I first heard it, wiped away all the excuses I used to make about why I couldn’t find time to write. Here it is:
Writers write.
That’s it.
P.C. ZICK 