Last week I was bemoaning my writing woes. How I felt like I was basically smashing my head against a brick wall. It was less than fun. It’s not a nice feeling, sitting down to do something and then eight hours later discovering that you’ve managed to achieve the sum total of naff and all. So I came up with the cunning and ingenious scheme of breaking the 5,000+ word novella I’ve promised down into ten tasty, bite-sized chunks of 500 words a piece. I’m now sitting pretty at just a few hundred shy of 2,000. So I’d say it’s been a moderate success, even if only 2 of the 10 slated sections have been done. I’d like to attribute this moderate success to my ingenious plan, but in truth I think it’s because of something else entirely. I think it’s due to the fact that my life is profoundly ass-backwards. That is to say, ludicrously disordered and showing an arrangement grotesquely counter to the conventional.
I’m back at work now. I’ve lost the better part of 4 or 5 nights this week to social commitments (both in the real world and on the internet) and to the general day-to-day business of domestic activity: making dinner, washing clothes, vaguely ensuring that I’m not living in my own filth. And yet despite all that I have managed to write more in two days than I did in the 3 whole weeks I was off from work. It seems nonsensical doesn’t it? But somehow very fitting. I can only get things done when I have no free time and am happiest when I’m at work. The exact opposite of most sane, functioning, human meat-peoples.
Admittedly my writing still feels like I’m smashing my head against a wall, but at least now my blood stains and spatterings of brain matter have left something resembling words on the coarse surface of the brick-work. They’re awful, awful words. But it’s better than nothing. I’ll fix it in the edit.
Probably…
January 16th, 2013 at 10:04 am
You speak many truths. It’s always the case that I’m more productive (or at least feel more productive) when several things are happening and that long languid stretches are not conducive to creativity. This has been problematic when I’ve been told to ‘relax’ but I can’t relax when I’m relaxing and, hell, I’m happiest when I’m smashing my head against a brick wall than smashing my head against thin air.
Yeah, basically in the middle of confused metaphors I get what you’re saying a share the ass-backward, nonsensical sensibility of getting more writing (and stuff other than writing) done when things are disordered. I think it’s a momentum and kung fu flow thing…
January 17th, 2013 at 5:30 pm
We are like sharks, the minute we stop swimming, we drown.