Coming up with story ideas is easy. Telling a whang-banger of a tale around a campfire is child's play. But sitting down day after day, slogging through the minutia of plot arc and character development is grunt work, requiring the same perseverance my dog employs when she watches me eat a plate of spaghetti. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the third installment of the First Draft Manifesto . . .

Principle #3: Endure to Infinity and Beyond

The idea of writing a novel is oh-so-much more romantic than actually parking your heinie in a chair and pounding out words. After a day or two of actual writing, the ninety-nine percent will tuck tail and run, whimpering about writer's cramp or block or something about a clogged artery in the posterior region.

Getting the story out of your head and onto paper takes time. A lot of it. It's called determination, folks, deciding that you're going to write whether or not:

• you feel like it
• the words are flowing
• it's a nice day outside
• you got invited out to lunch
• the zombie apocalypse takes place