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"The truth is that the only way not to feel really terrible is to work.
But sometimes it seems easier just to feel really terrible."
-- Rust Hills, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular (from the final chapter "Afterword: Writing in General")
It took me way longer to read this short 197-page book than it should have... around two months or so. This book was actually one of the many books that had been assigned to me in various classes at DigiPen and one of a very few of those that I decided to keep and bring back to NC with me when I moved out of WA in February, rather than selling to the used book store like all the others, because it dealt with writing rather than more technical stuff like math or programming or whatever. Now, before I move on I have to say that it wasn't a bad book or anything. It was interesting overall, if a bit dry at times, and the reason it took so long for me to read it had nothing to do with the quality of the book itself. Just getting that out there. I'm sure the fact that only a couple of days after I started reading this book was when I got my computer and Internet connection hooked up is entirely coincidental. ¬_¬ Anyway, I can count on one hand the spurts in which I read this book, as well as recall the occasions on which I did so. Aside from when I simply read it for an hour or so before going to bed which occurred in the day or two before I got the computer and Internet, the first concrete instance was while sitting in my car in the parking lot of the local doctor's office while my mom had an appointment, the second was around a month or more ago and was similar to last night when I randomly lay awake in bed at around 2:30am, the third was when I was sitting in my car in the parking lot of the local eye doctor's office while my mom had an appointment, the fourth was while sitting in the lobby of a medical center in Greensboro while my sister had an appointment, and the fifth and final was last night, when I once again randomly lay awake in bed at around 2:30am. I finished it during this period.
I don't know if it was because I was still awake and reading at around 4:20am[1] after trying and failing to go to sleep from around 1:00am onward or what, but when I reached that "The truth is that the only way not to feel really terrible is to work," line it struck me as being really profound for some reason. It's kind of not, really, but yet that's how I felt about it. This line came at the end of a moderately large paragraph, so I stopped there for a bit to think about that sentence. Then I decided to continue reading, and that's when I reached the next "But sometimes it seems easier to just feel really terrible," line, which was the beginning line of the next paragraph, as well as being the only sentence in said paragraph. The context for these lines is that Rust Hills was talking about how he operates when he's trying to write and how he ends up procrastinating and the like. Earlier in this afterword, he'd written "If the way my mind works when I'm trying to write has any resemblance to the way real writers' minds work, then I pity them all."
I think the reason those two sentences struck me so much is that I am quite squarely on the "feel[ing] really terrible" side of that equation now. Remember back in February when I said that I wanted to be a writer? Guess how much writing I've done since that point in time. If you guessed "not a whit," you'd be wrong, but it does indeed feel dangerously close to that to me. I've written a bit shy of 3,500 words for a writing project that a few of you are already aware of but which I'm probably not supposed to openly discuss in a public forum so I'll leave it at that. I've written 220 pages of hand-written journal since I started it on January 10, 2014 (that is, I've filled up a full 100-sheet college-rule composition book, single-spaced and with a horrifying lack of any paragraph breaks at all, as well as another 10 sheets into a second identical composition book), but have really been slacking off on that lately. The most recent entries I made were one a day from May 7-9, then before that one a day between April 23-25, then April 18 and prior I'd been managing to make an (almost) unbroken string of entries, at least one a day, ranging back to the start in January (even if some of the later entries were quite short, at least one of which even consisted entirely of the word "Meh," and nothing else). And... I've written whatever piddling stuff on Facebook, Twitter, and here on LiveJournal. That's about it. That novel that has been rattling around in my head for the past decade or more? Still in there rattling away. Hell, I haven't even written anything on my damn MLP:FiM/Star Trek crossover fanfic since last September.
In short, I'd say that I'm afflicted with a severe case of writer's block, but that's not really accurate at all, as I pretty much haven't even tried to start writing much of anything yet, aside from that 3.5k word short-story-ish thing. Part of the reason for this is that I felt like I'd be better off waiting until I had a job before I tried to seriously get into writing, that any time spent on writing was time not spent trying to get a job, and... well, despite everything I still don't have a job yet, and I've been otherwise wasting time that could have been better spent writing or more proactively trying to get a job instead just playing Terraria and Star Trek Online and whatever else anyway. -_-;
Not fishing for sympathy or anything here, not really. The purpose of writing this LJ entry is mostly to do something that might act as a sort of self-imposed kick in the pants. As far as job-hunting goes, I think my standards might have been a little bit higher than they have any right to be, so I am going to give myself until the beginning of June (i.e. next Monday or so) to try to get my head straight, and then I'm going to start hitting the retail stores like K-mart or Walmart or whatever. After that, assuming all goes remotely okay and I finally have some money coming in again, then I'll start thinking about the whole writing thing again.
Basically, I think that Mr. Hills's quote above applies to me two-fold, first in the writing context he intended, but second also in a more general sense. It certainly has seemed a lot easier lately to just "feel really terrible" than it has been to do much to alleviate it. But now I'm kind of more than a little sick and tired of it.
[1] - nb4 marijuana jokes kthxbye
But sometimes it seems easier just to feel really terrible."
-- Rust Hills, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular (from the final chapter "Afterword: Writing in General")
It took me way longer to read this short 197-page book than it should have... around two months or so. This book was actually one of the many books that had been assigned to me in various classes at DigiPen and one of a very few of those that I decided to keep and bring back to NC with me when I moved out of WA in February, rather than selling to the used book store like all the others, because it dealt with writing rather than more technical stuff like math or programming or whatever. Now, before I move on I have to say that it wasn't a bad book or anything. It was interesting overall, if a bit dry at times, and the reason it took so long for me to read it had nothing to do with the quality of the book itself. Just getting that out there. I'm sure the fact that only a couple of days after I started reading this book was when I got my computer and Internet connection hooked up is entirely coincidental. ¬_¬ Anyway, I can count on one hand the spurts in which I read this book, as well as recall the occasions on which I did so. Aside from when I simply read it for an hour or so before going to bed which occurred in the day or two before I got the computer and Internet, the first concrete instance was while sitting in my car in the parking lot of the local doctor's office while my mom had an appointment, the second was around a month or more ago and was similar to last night when I randomly lay awake in bed at around 2:30am, the third was when I was sitting in my car in the parking lot of the local eye doctor's office while my mom had an appointment, the fourth was while sitting in the lobby of a medical center in Greensboro while my sister had an appointment, and the fifth and final was last night, when I once again randomly lay awake in bed at around 2:30am. I finished it during this period.
I don't know if it was because I was still awake and reading at around 4:20am[1] after trying and failing to go to sleep from around 1:00am onward or what, but when I reached that "The truth is that the only way not to feel really terrible is to work," line it struck me as being really profound for some reason. It's kind of not, really, but yet that's how I felt about it. This line came at the end of a moderately large paragraph, so I stopped there for a bit to think about that sentence. Then I decided to continue reading, and that's when I reached the next "But sometimes it seems easier to just feel really terrible," line, which was the beginning line of the next paragraph, as well as being the only sentence in said paragraph. The context for these lines is that Rust Hills was talking about how he operates when he's trying to write and how he ends up procrastinating and the like. Earlier in this afterword, he'd written "If the way my mind works when I'm trying to write has any resemblance to the way real writers' minds work, then I pity them all."
I think the reason those two sentences struck me so much is that I am quite squarely on the "feel[ing] really terrible" side of that equation now. Remember back in February when I said that I wanted to be a writer? Guess how much writing I've done since that point in time. If you guessed "not a whit," you'd be wrong, but it does indeed feel dangerously close to that to me. I've written a bit shy of 3,500 words for a writing project that a few of you are already aware of but which I'm probably not supposed to openly discuss in a public forum so I'll leave it at that. I've written 220 pages of hand-written journal since I started it on January 10, 2014 (that is, I've filled up a full 100-sheet college-rule composition book, single-spaced and with a horrifying lack of any paragraph breaks at all, as well as another 10 sheets into a second identical composition book), but have really been slacking off on that lately. The most recent entries I made were one a day from May 7-9, then before that one a day between April 23-25, then April 18 and prior I'd been managing to make an (almost) unbroken string of entries, at least one a day, ranging back to the start in January (even if some of the later entries were quite short, at least one of which even consisted entirely of the word "Meh," and nothing else). And... I've written whatever piddling stuff on Facebook, Twitter, and here on LiveJournal. That's about it. That novel that has been rattling around in my head for the past decade or more? Still in there rattling away. Hell, I haven't even written anything on my damn MLP:FiM/Star Trek crossover fanfic since last September.
In short, I'd say that I'm afflicted with a severe case of writer's block, but that's not really accurate at all, as I pretty much haven't even tried to start writing much of anything yet, aside from that 3.5k word short-story-ish thing. Part of the reason for this is that I felt like I'd be better off waiting until I had a job before I tried to seriously get into writing, that any time spent on writing was time not spent trying to get a job, and... well, despite everything I still don't have a job yet, and I've been otherwise wasting time that could have been better spent writing or more proactively trying to get a job instead just playing Terraria and Star Trek Online and whatever else anyway. -_-;
Not fishing for sympathy or anything here, not really. The purpose of writing this LJ entry is mostly to do something that might act as a sort of self-imposed kick in the pants. As far as job-hunting goes, I think my standards might have been a little bit higher than they have any right to be, so I am going to give myself until the beginning of June (i.e. next Monday or so) to try to get my head straight, and then I'm going to start hitting the retail stores like K-mart or Walmart or whatever. After that, assuming all goes remotely okay and I finally have some money coming in again, then I'll start thinking about the whole writing thing again.
Basically, I think that Mr. Hills's quote above applies to me two-fold, first in the writing context he intended, but second also in a more general sense. It certainly has seemed a lot easier lately to just "feel really terrible" than it has been to do much to alleviate it. But now I'm kind of more than a little sick and tired of it.
[1] - nb4 marijuana jokes kthxbye
