Where did all the words go?
I'm a fraud, I'm afraid. I pretend to be this writist fellow, but in truth I've hardly written a thing in recent months. A couple of short stories since Christmas, another one just sitting there mocking me to be finished. A few dozen pages of illegible scrawlings about Benfro book three (only one side about book four) and some random attempts at putting together a timeline for the book, all abandoned when I got distracted and lost the flow.
It's a pathetic output for someone who wants to call themselves an author. Sure I can moan that real, paying, work keeps on getting in the way. Today I had every intention of dedicating the afternoon to my latest short story, but I made the mistake of reading my email first thing, and consequently spent the whole day tangled in code. Bollocks.
Something has taken a large chunk of my creativity, though. There is one place where I have been productive. Right here.
Since the beginning of the year I've posted 40,000 words on Sir Benfro.
Think about that for a moment. Three months, 40K. That's a slim novel in six months, a fantasy in a year. And this is just the random gibberish I come up with at the end of the day. My mad musings and illiterate gobbledegook, worries, woes and other assorted dogwank. That total doesn't include all the comments I've added here either, let alone the trail of inanity that wanders drunkenly across several other blogs of my acquaintance.
Just think what I could achieve if I put my mind to it.
Forty thousand words. Sheesh.
It's a pathetic output for someone who wants to call themselves an author. Sure I can moan that real, paying, work keeps on getting in the way. Today I had every intention of dedicating the afternoon to my latest short story, but I made the mistake of reading my email first thing, and consequently spent the whole day tangled in code. Bollocks.
Something has taken a large chunk of my creativity, though. There is one place where I have been productive. Right here.
Since the beginning of the year I've posted 40,000 words on Sir Benfro.
Think about that for a moment. Three months, 40K. That's a slim novel in six months, a fantasy in a year. And this is just the random gibberish I come up with at the end of the day. My mad musings and illiterate gobbledegook, worries, woes and other assorted dogwank. That total doesn't include all the comments I've added here either, let alone the trail of inanity that wanders drunkenly across several other blogs of my acquaintance.
Just think what I could achieve if I put my mind to it.
Forty thousand words. Sheesh.
Comments
Think of it this way. If you work the same muscle groups strenuously every day, you'll injur yourself and put yourself into a long process of recovery that'll keep you from working those muscles for a while.
Writing is one thing. Creative output is another. Sometimes, our creative pool is running a bit low, or we need to give the ideas time to gel and work themselves into something good. Discipline is one thing - this is why it's always easier when you have the structure of a project in front of you - but sometimes, it's hard to kickstart the creativity.
And sometimes you should relax a bit, I think. Mental overload isn't any good either.
But then, don't listen to me. We all know output isn't my problem. It's just my flawed writing style.
*sigh*
I'm trying not to get into anything too deeply because I'm waiting for edits.
And Sandra, I agree we should all relax from time to time, and we need to do things other than writing, or we just end up writing about people who spend all their time writing. My problem is not so much a lack of creativity as a lack of motivation. I know I can pick up Benfro and run with it, but I just can't be arsed right now.
Which is bad.