This piece on being a night owl, by Kathryn Schulz, really hits me where I live. One feels less lonely now, anyway.
I often refer to myself as an insomniac, since I hardly sleep at all, but I can’t help but wonder: If not for all my early-morning obligations–if I were allowed to follow my own schedule–would I manage to get more than a few hours of sleep a night (or, rather, day)? Such a pity there are so few careers that allow one to get up at noon, that also pay a living wage.
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How To Write The Great American Novel. Actually, more of a list (a bloody long one, at that) of things to stop doing, if one wants to be able to write the Great American Novel. Also, what are you so worried about, America, with wanting a Great Novel about yourself? “No one really gets me, man!” Well, maybe you don’t want that. Reading someone else’s description of you can be incredibly disturbing.
Also, there’s so much more to America than what it keeps inside its boarders–there’s a bunch of foreign policy things that we put out there from time to time, and that’s as much of who we are as Brooklyn is. The best book about America in the world is probably one that’s not written in English and has no chance of being translated anyway.
Ah, the good ol’ Tournament of Books. Come for the competition between Téa Obreht and Haruki Murakami–but stay to watch Kevin Guilfoile get embarrassingly obsessed over the fact that a critic of the MFA establishment used to work as a prostitute. Oh, and did he mention that she was a prostitute? Because, not that it’s important, but he would really like you to know that this person he disagrees with was A PROSTITUTE. I’m not sure why, that’s so important exactly….
DOUBLE PROSTITUTE!!!!!!!
If you’re a writer who likes to interview writers, someone wants to talk to you. I can think of several people who might be interested, but I swear to god I can’t keep track of who is supposed to hate who these days. Do bloggers still do that? Or are rivalries strictly a Twitter thing now?
Strike while the iron is hot, they say. Sometimes, you hear people say that about ideas. The theory is that it’s best to start working on something during that first flush of enthusiasm, getting as much done as possible while you’re motivated, because if you wait, you might not feel like putting in the necessary work, and the whole thing just fades away. I don’t know if this is valuable advice or not, but I do know this: By my projections, by around 2017 I’ll have as many unposted “drafts” as I do actual posts on this here blog.
While it seems that I don’t post an awful lot, it would be wrong to think that I’m not constantly writing posts. A lot of them just don’t get finished. I either never get to the end of them, or I go back to revise them and think, “Nooooooo, what have you DONE, don’t post that!” Which is not so bad, I think. But I never delete them, either.
The problem is that I keep thinking that I can someday go back and save them–which is ridiculous. In order to do something like that, I would need to work a lot harder than I do, or I’d need to be a lot better of a writer, which… is not a very likely future outcome.
Just seeing the sheer number of abandoned drafts on my screen is an enervating experience. Even when I log in to WordPress with fiery enthusiasm, that list of misfits stops me cold for a second. What am I going to do with these, I think to myself. I can’t finish them. But I can’t just delete them, either.
I should really be doing the latter, but it’s just too easy not to. They’re not taking valuable space in a desk drawer, they don’t have to be boxed up and shifted when I move or rearrange my furniture, they don’t bother me when I’m logged out of WordPress, so they don’t inconvenience me enough to overcome the propensity I have to never throw anything away.
At least, they didn’t used to. Now, I’m starting to get a little sick of looking at them whenever I’m here.
What’s funny is that I am a pretty ruthless reviser. Every essay you’ve ever read here (I’m not counting the “short” posts, which I don’t even proofread before posting) used to be at least twice as long in first draft. I don’t know why I work that way, it’s just what makes sense to me. But, while I am happy to lose material from anything that eventually gets published, I have a hard time deleting a post that doesn’t work in toto. Somehow, that’s different. I guess that polishing something for other people to read is acceptable to me, while blinking something else entirely out of existence is not.
What do you want from me, unused drafts? I can’t fix you! Stop looking at me like that with those puppy-dog eyes!
That’s enough hemming and hawing, I think. It’s finally time for me to ditch these boat anchors. Time to clear the decks, especially of stuff that is too heavily reliant on seafaring metaphors (I don’t even like boats, for crying out loud). Time to be ruthless, and cut out these digital freeloaders. Pah! Who needs them!
Besides, WordPress saves everything in the trash bin anyway, right?
This was noted everywhere yesterday, and I have to express my sadness, here. She was a legend.
Another journalist confronts their bully. Wait, no; it’s a writer interviewing a critic who slammed his book.
One has reserves of memory, which is obviously a writer’s main resource, really.
See, this is why I could never be a writer. For one thing, my memory is absolutely terrible, but that’s not the big problem. When I was taking creative writing classes and hoping to discover some aptitude for telling stories, I found myself constantly straining to observe and retain every aspect of where I was, the people who were with me, and what we were all doing. It mostly felt like my brain was going to explode, and I never did find a way to cope with that. But then, if writing was easy we’d all be doing it, I guess.
As I write this, the second day of November is just coming to a close, and somewhere out there are thousands of people desperately trying to meet their Nanowrimo word-counts. I think that’s rather wonderful.
I’ve gone back and forth over it in my mind, but in the end I decided not to participate this year. I did nano once, and while I will unequivocally state that it was a great experience, the fact that I’ve already done it before makes me feel that I don’t really need to do it again. That’s not because it isn’t worth doing in and of itself; it has more to do with my reasons for doing it than anything else, and it would be ridiculous to assume that those reasons would apply to anybody else.
It was curiosity that drove me to participate in Nanowrimo, back in 2007. I had wanted to write a book for a long time, even though I had no ideas for one, nothing to write about. I had no idea if I was even capable of performing the physical labor required to generate the requisite amount of text. And, lo and behold, it turns out that I actually could. Someday perhaps, I’ll have an idea for a book. If I do, at least I know that I have the ability to type out the manuscript.
But, knowing that, would it make much sense for me to go through all of that typing again? I don’t think I’d get much value out of it.
If I had an idea for a novel, but refused to put it down on paper because of that old non-writers’ complaint (“I just don’t have the time!“), Nanowrimo would be just the thing. It would force me to get that first draft written (or, half a first draft, maybe). Just at the moment, I’m having a hard time coming up with ideas for 500-word essays–a novel is out of the question. (Incidentally, is there anything anyone wants me to write about? No suggestion too small!)
So, I’m not going to write a novel this year. But I’m glad that Nanowrimo exists, just the same. Forget about all the philosophical implications for a minute–it’s just really fun!
John Scalzi’s latest Filmcritic.com column features a list of sci-fi writing prompts. Which is… cool, I guess? I know that a lot of people use writing prompts. I just don’t tend to find them that useful.
I am definitely not saying that they aren’t a good thing, nor am I saying that there is something wrong with the people who use them. It is not my intention to judge others. But let me tell you why I hate writing prompts.
I’ve taken a couple of creative writing classes over the years, and they taught me a great deal. Specifically, what they taught me is that I am not a creative writer. What I am is something more along the lines of “an earnest smart-ass.” I had to learn to be okay with this on my own, but even so it was those creative writing classes that got me started on that path.
But I hated the writing prompt exercises that they made us do, though I understood why they did it. One of the secrets of learning how to write is to write a lot. (The other secret is to read a lot, but that’s a topic for some other time.) The problem with that is it’s often difficult to know what to write about. So, writing prompts are great for that.
They’re also good training if you ever plan on writing for money, since the people likely to hire you will give you all sorts of constraints and deadlines, which you will be required to meet in order to get paid.
I just don’t find many writing prompts to be that interesting. Or, at least the prompt itself is often more interesting than the writing it inspires; sort of like how the headlines in The Onion are way funnier than the actual stories that follow them.
But still! Prompts are good! Please do not stop writing to prompts!
