Friday, May 28, 2010

The Difference Between Writer's Block And Being Stuck

I haven't been writing as much as I was several months ago, and the fact that I haven't been is simultaneously both a source of inspiration and consternation for me. On the one hand, any time I start to feel like I'm too busy to write, or life is too frustrating, or whatever, I can tell myself, "hey, asshole, you mowed through 50,000 words in thirty days. You wrote for a month and a half, EVERY SINGLE DAY, without stopping." It's kind of cool when you can be your own personal hero, since, shit, you already achieved it once, what's stopping you from doing it again?

On the other hand, it sometimes makes me feel like absolute shit that I made it through half of my book in thirty days, and then it's taken me almost seven months to make it through the second half. So there's a bit of give and take going back and forth there.

I've been trying to figure out why the writing has been so difficult lately, why it just hasn't been happening as much. The glib, superficial, and fucking annoying answer would be because I'm not trying, because I haven't been sitting in front of a blank word document and a blinking cursor. But I hate glib, superficial answers. Even if they're correct, they're not terribly interesting. So let's assume that there's an interesting reason and explore it. Together.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Metaphors Are Like... Squirrels, Or Something To That Effect

It's probably a mistake, the way I approach writing. I don't mean that I think the way I write is a mistake, necessarily, although I certainly do make quite a few mistakes. Everyone does, though... I read somewhere that in order to master something, I mean, in order to really consider yourself an expert at something, it takes around 10,000 hours of practice. That's something in the order of practicing two hours, every single day, for something like fourteen years, which means I'm probably a master at sleeping, and not much else.

Anyway, my point isn't about the mistakes that I make when I write, because even though I like to think I'm pretty good at it, I realize I'm not an expert... I mean, hell, I need spell check to catch me when I do things like misspell "yourself," which I've done twice so far in this post.