Yes, *yes*, Mr Pratchett. Now do go away, there's a good fellow.

[flemmings]

For more than three years I wrote more than 400 words every day. I mean, every calendar day. If for some reason, in those pre-portable days, I couldn't get to a keyboard, I wrote hard the previous night and caught up the following day, and if it ever seemed that it was easy to do the average I upped the average. I also did a hell of a lot of editing afterwards but the point was there was something there to edit. I had a more than full-time job as well. I hate to say this, but most of the successful (well, okay... rich) authors I know seem to put 'application' around the top of the list of How-to-do-its. Tough but true.

Application? Well, it means... application. The single-minded ability to knuckle down and get on with it, as they say in Unseen University library.

There may be something to this 'online rots the brain' thing. Or maybe I've developed a late case of Adult ADD. I've lost the lead ass ability to sit and read for any length of time. Even if I'm enjoying the book I get restless, fidgety, have to go do something else, play some computer solitaire, whatever. 'There's something more amusing somewhere if I can just find it' which is the curse of the net-- as it was not, I observe, the curse of MLs. The discussions there could keep me happily focussed for hours, though that's partly because I read and type slowly. Even lj doesn't allow for that kind of personal interaction.

As for writing-- the story can still suck me in at times, so that once writing I keep writing and there, 300+ words before i know it. At other times-- no. I get to the point where I left off and the inner toddler digs her heels in and says No I don' wanna this isn't fun, go do something fun go play solitaire instead.

One can write anyway but the experience is deathly. No pictures, no ideas, only the wrong words squeezed out one by one to describe a vacuity, and when the words do come they go in wrong directions so that suddenly I find Gouen sulking because Shanten said No, rather than Gouen in low spirits because his brother is still gone and Pipang doesn't want him and Goukou has stopped treating him like the favoured youngest and the Hermit showed him Goujun in precisely such a way that Gouen won't be able to find him again, which are all perfectly reasonable reasons to be down in the mouth.

Off to hack a trail through that particular jungle patch.

Comments

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

Goukou has stopped treating him like the favoured youngest

Snerrrrk. You're a man and a father, Gouen. Time to grow up, maybe?

But sympathies for the creative argh. Going through an argh this is too hard why do I bother patch, so I do know where you're coming from.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

'Goujun isn't here any more. I'll screw you instead.' Just because Gouen can now doesn't mean he has to like it.

Too hard why do I bother is a chronic occupational hazard. Summer doesn't help. Why bother doing anything in summer, when breathing itself is work?

[purpleicicles.livejournal.com]

You have major sympathies from me - the more I have to read in my LJ inbox, the less inclined I am to read it, and whenever I have the time to write nothing creative or even good is forthcoming. Woe. X( *commiserates*

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I welcome lj inbox. Answering comments distracts from writing.

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

Oh my dear ... I hear and feel every word you say ... it seems it might be catching even the difficult to breathe part ...but that's because it's acough that's lingering and the ash is in the air from all sorts of sources.

*oh word woes oh breathing woes* - Sigh!

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Torontonian shortness of breath is as nothing to the LRD version. Hang in. Moon cakes in a month six weeks!

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

Mooncakes now, actually, they're in shops already. Every year they appear earlier and earlier and nobody buys them because "the seventh month isn't even over yet!! D:"

Maybe they're samples for taking large orders, I dunno.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Send them to meeeee!!!!

OK, shall see what Chinatown South has available.

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

*grin* Gladly, if you'll email me your mailing address.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Ahh, you tempt me. But moon cakes would go stale by the time they got here parcel post from LRD, and Canuck Customs probably wouldn't let them in because of the duck eggs. I shall make do with the local (well, Canuck local) approximation. But thank you for the thought.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

Much as I hate to say this 'cause I'll miss you terribly if you do, but perhaps it's time to take a vacation from online or even the computer. I notice it too, the lack of getting stuff done on account of time on the computer.

The sister has stopped checking her computer but once a week, what with chasing two toddlers, and says it's amazing how much surfing the web destroys time and energy. She has no intention of going back to using the computer on a regular basis, but then she's got the sports gene not the artistic gene.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

No, I won't vacation from the computer. Writing journal entries is still writing, and I can't write longhand happily these days. If I didn't websurf, I'd do acrostics: and when I feel the need to do crostic after crostic, I know I'm dealing with depression, not AADD. Depression may be part of the reason for the sustained lack of interest in reading: this stuff is well enough but not rivetting, so why am I reading it? And the answer is, because everyone else is or has. Which isn't really a good reason.

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay. Different mechanism entirely!

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Alas, yes. If only it were a need to go and run about in the great outdoors. On an artificial knee, isn't it, that your sister has?

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

Only partly. It was the mil that had the fully artificial one.