I swear I see this at least once a week on some writer’s blog or another. I am unsympathetic, but perhaps it’s because if I don’t have time to write, I don’t spend X number of minutes writing a blog post about how I don’t have time to write.
Color me curmudgeonly, but a writer writes, even if it’s only in his head, plotting, working through a problem, playing what-if, taking notes into one of those micro-recorder key chain thingies, having a scrap piece of paper and a pencil, churning your issues over with a friend or talking to yourself. I don’t care.
Writing isn’t always about sitting in front of a blank computer screen and staring at it. It’s about fostering the world you’re building and the characters you’re creating. Do you really do that in front of a computer screen, pounding out each word like it’s a chore?
I want to know something: How much of your story could you have written if you hadn’t spent that time on your blog complaining about not having any time to write? Or is writing a chore for you who can’t find time to write?
February 19th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
.
I get you and agree with you, but I can’t get my brain aligned with my novel in the seconds it takes to crank out a blogpost. Writing a blogpost is like sneezing. Writing a novel is like sinus surgery.
That said, manage your freaking time, people.
February 19th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Well, when you put it like that, sneezing v sinus surgery, I can see the point.
February 20th, 2009 at 12:17 am
Sometimes I feel like I’m pounding out each word like it’s a chore. That’s when I step away, drink a pint or two of Jim Beam, then sit back in front of the screen.
(I jest.)
February 20th, 2009 at 7:04 am
My role model has always been Jack London. He got up two hours early to write — before stoking coal for ten.
February 20th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Kel, you naughty girl. If I drank, I’d drink with you.
Geez, we do tend to forget what those who went before us sacrificed for their art.
February 20th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
“How much of your story could you have written if you hadn’t spent that time on your blog complaining about not having any time to write?”
Ouch. (Right where it hurts!)
Very true, though. There’s not much validity in complaints about having no time to write if it’s obvious that significant time has been spent writing blog posts. For me, at least, it’s a matter of what *kind* of writing, not whether I’m writing (seems I can’t *not* write). At the end of the day I find it’s difficult to summon enough mental energy to do the heavy lifting of fiction writing, while blogging is usually just low-effort playing around. But sometimes I wonder how much of my blogging is just a way to avoid the more difficult aspects of writing.
February 20th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
‘fraid I’m no Jack London.