Connie speaks for me. Though it took me reading enough books to realize there's more than one Right Way to realize it. Many of the books I read early on were big on outlines, systems, and the idea that if you're not driven to write every single day, you're obviously not cut out for this.

The two things that have helped me persist to the point where I'm pretty sure I'm over half finished with my novel are: 1) Diana Gabaldon's website and Outlandish Companion book, which taught me to adopt an "outline, schmoutline" attitude and work on whatever scene is in my head that day, regardless of how out of order I'm working, and 2) hearing on a documentary that Tolkien would put LotR aside for months on end, and that sometimes it took CS Lewis nagging him to get him going again.

Hey, for a hick kid fresh from the boonies, who'd only seen the name Aristotle enshrined in "important" books, it was a big thing. "Yes, my child, you, too, have a working brain capable of philosophical thought." Philosophical thought in Greene County was debating beer and football teams.

if you're not driven to write every single day, you're obviously not cut out for this.

Oh, gods, yes. Yeah, I'd love to write every day, but, you know, the work thing, and the husband who's deeply jealous of my computer, etc. etc.

So, I'm the only one who studiously avoided anything remotely resembling a lit class that so much as mentioned Aristotle, Plato and the utilitarians? I'm the only freak out there who just sits down and writes?

(I'll just be over here with my small X-Fileish stealth craft, boarding to return to my home planet)

I've been trying to do it, but I don't always.I think I need to try though because it's my habit not to take my writing seriously. I was gonna type work but I can only hear that in sarcastic quotes, so...

I'm the only freak out there who just sits down and writes?

Freak! Freak with twelve novels!

I never took a creative writing class in college; my favorite English prof recommended against it. I read the Utilitarians for pleasure, and I took lots of English courses that didn't stand between me and the creation.

I know it doesn't work this way for you, Deb, but it took a lot of ego-buttressing before I believed that I could write. Some of that ego-buttressing came from books. (Some of the ego-knocks came from books, too, like assertions that if you don't HAVE to write, you're not a writer.)

I'm the only freak out there who just sits down and writes?

Um, Deb, I'm finding that a tad judgemental of those of us who have looked into the underpinnings of structure without having our essential voices contaminated.

No, Deborah, you're not. That's what I do now, but not in college. Now, I don't want to be "molded and shaped". Then, I was a Mentor Groupie. It would be sad, except they were very kind about it.ETA: 12? I would love to be a Freak Like You.

So, I'm the only one who studiously avoided anything remotely resembling a lit class that so much as mentioned Aristotle, Plato and the utilitarians?

Oh, nothing so highbrow for me. My writing classes have been strictly crit groups with occasional discussions of how to submit a manuscript and how to handle various aspects of the storytelling process. And I ignore half of what the instructor says on the latter anyway, because he's writing in a different format and genre than I am.