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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3971 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 19, 2023

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Anyone else here have dreams of becoming a writer, but spends too much time working/procrastinating etc? Life just seems to busy to really carve out time for writing - even though I don't have kids.

Perhaps I'm just making excuses, but full time work + keeping up with the house cleaning + social life + family obligations takes a lot out of you.

“Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy-ass weights.”

I wrote a 100k word novel once, and it was worth it. But it was also an incredible volume of work. The highs are very high, but most of the writing process is tedious. I don't blame GRRM and others for wanting to "be" a writer, without, you know.

Congrats on the novel, I’d imagine it is definitely tedious.

What was your life situation like when you wrote it, working full time or what?

Yes, though I wasn't keeping up with those house cleaning + social life + family obligations you speak of. Easy peasy computer job with time for eg Reddit browsing, though that didn't help with novel writing. Too many interruptions. You need to block out time to get anywhere.

I may be contradicting myself, but the time commitment isn't that crazy — reserving an hour a day for pure writing got me there after a year. It's just that the time you spend is not pleasant at all. Writing a novel is a vacuum cleaner for spare mental energy. You're thinking all day how you're going to translate a few bullet points into a chapter. And then you type your thoughts, one by one, in grueling ego battle. Often you end up staring at a page of work you grunted out and thinking, wow, this is worthless, I'm probably going to cut this in editing. And you do.

Not very fun compared to spending that same time browsing The Motte.

Yes. It's more irritating because there have been periods of my life where I actually carved out a routine and made it happen for a while. I wrote some short stories and novellas. I even had a nonfiction piece published in a local anthology last year. I'm not truly a good writer - just look at my comments on this website for evidence of that - but when I put my mind to it, I have had genuine success.

But for some time now I've been in yet another one of those phases where my job is sucking the life out of me; in the morning I play with my cat, in the evenings I go to the gym, do chores, read, and sleep, and doing something really creative feels totally beyond me. I know I should man up and pursue my dreams, but for right now, I'll just lay down and wait to die...

I will note something that I want to act on soon. Recently I read the novel Shane by Jack Schaefer - better known today for its 1953 film adaptation, but a well-loved novel in its own right. Anyway: Schaefer, at the age of 38, started "writing fiction after hours as a way of calming down." He escaped into the world of the Old West through his writing. By doing this - he put out several very popular novels which are still remembered now. Not by struggling and grinding to the limit: he found a way of doing it which felt good, an escape which felt relaxing. Couldn't we do that, ourselves?

We can dream, brother. We can dream.

I am a writer because I write. Regardless of skill, quality, or volume, I write because it is my means of expression. Perhaps you aren't published, fine. Neither am I. I still write. What's stopping you? It's free. Write and forget about any stupid bullshit holding you back from embodying what you want to become. Do it because to not do it would mean death. Don't do it because you dream, do it because imagining yourself doing anything else makes you sick to your stomach. Being a writer is as simple as pen to paper, finger to keyboard, mind to word. So just do it.

I like this idea! I do write a lot even if it’s not necessarily organized into a book.

I know I am a bad writer, so I don't really worry about chasing that dream. I have a detailed outline that I should sit down and turn into a proper short story just so I can say that I walked that road once and have no intention of walking it ever again.

I'm also pretty convinced that I don't actually have many interesting story ideas, at least not ones that I could execute with any skill.

Read enough Sci-fi, especially, and realize that most thoughts you've had for story concepts aren't original, and someone already flawlessly executed them 20 or even 40 years back.

You've just described, like, 81% of the American public.

Among lawyers, I wouldn't be surprised if that figure asymptotically approached 99%. It seems like every lawyer I meet is an aspiring author--and not just the English undergrads who went to law school because they failed to write their novel.

This even applies to successful authors--George R.R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss are in the midst of doing the literary equivalent of bouncing checks to their readership. It turns out that spending ungodly sums of money on whatever strikes your fancy is way more fun than writing more books.

In connection with graduate school, I often give the advice "don't go to graduate school unless you simply can't see yourself doing anything else." I think something similar applies to writing, except in graduate school at least you have some structure and feedback built into the process. Until it is the thing that you have to do, you will probably never become a writer.

Bouncing checks?

Shit, I’m as annoyed as the next guy that Rothfuss is running D&D campaigns or whatever instead of publishing more. But I didn’t buy his nonexistent third book yet, just the first two.

I suppose there’s an argument that those first two are devalued, and I wouldn’t have bought them if I expected the series to remain unfinished…That’s certainly now how I thought of it at the time. Perhaps my lifetime of internet fiction has raised my tolerance for unfinished stories.

I’ve been so burned by Pat and George I refuse to start series now unless they’re finished.

Bouncing checks?

I first hear this phrase used to describe the ending of Lost (the TV show)--the writers wrote a bunch of narrative checks that failed to clear, or words to that effect. I thought it was apt. I think, as long as Rothfuss and Martin fail to deliver on their promises, they are meaningfully blameworthy. I appreciate Neil Gaiman coming to Martin's defense ("George Martin is not your bitch" or whatever he said) but the only reason I have to respect Gaiman's opinion on the matter is that Gaiman finishes what he starts, so his white knighting here turns out to be a bit self-undermining. Whatever people want to say about muses or mental health or whatever--I'm not saying Martin deserves the electric chair, or even a small fine. I'm saying he and Rothfuss are morally on par with people who have written checks while failing to deposit sufficient funds for those checks to clear.

Perhaps my lifetime of internet fiction has raised my tolerance for unfinished stories.

Perhaps! But also it's a very small thing, in a world of big things. I rarely think about it, except in the context of people finishing books. Most writers don't--new writers, yes, of course, but also, often, successful authors who clearly could (they've done it before!), if they actually cared enough to try.

Yes, except my problems are that I’m lazy, distracted, and also a bad writer.

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