What kind of a writer?
The thoughts that made me
I take a long time to write what seems to me to be a rather small amount of work. In each session, my goal usually is just to endure, until I hit my stride. The only objective for me is to hang on long enough until I find that balance, when.. the words just begin to flow. And it goes, and goes, and goes… That’s my gold.
I’m not at all in the habit of taking notes before starting to write, and I seldomly do so; but sometimes I have a phrase or maybe an entire sentence finished and made up in my mind, which then becomes the focus of that session.
The best way I know for me to get the engine running is doing daily copywork. Just one page of a writer whose language I like, and I’m good to go. The past few days I have done my copying in the morning and my creative writing in the evening.. it might be more efficient if done right after another.
Just a few years ago, I was in the habit of writing everything in fountain pen. Admittedly, there wasn’t so much for me to write. But if I ended up doing so, it was always with my very own fountain pen (it had my name engraved on it!). Now I like the aesthetic look & feel of writing with a cheap pencil.
While going to pee, I just thought of another advantage of writing by hand: it is slower. I am an unusually slow thinker, and I often out-type myself with a keyboard. That’s, I think, when creative block happens; I just get ahead of myself and my thoughts haven’t caught up yet.
Writing by hand just feels better. It also just feels nice to identify as ‘one of those few writers’, instead of as ‘one of all the others.’
I think that, from here on out, I’ll do all of my stream-of-consciousness writing by hand. For stories, which often need a lot of adjusting and rearranging mid-process (driving through the fog with only one headlight on, as Neil Gaiman would say), I’ll stick with the computer.
I’d love to do some late-night writing again. That used to be my most productive time, for everything. Now, all I do at night is sleeping.. what a waste.
I believe I don’t look very interesting when I write. Definitely not as much so as I could. Maybe I should make more of an effort.
I don’t like to think that there is something like a world of writing. I refuse to be connected to that. I wouldn’t want to be in the loop about the latest book news (just as much as I wouldn’t want to be in the loop about any other news). Or be compelled to read the latest hottest thing on some poorly curated bestseller list. I am reading different books than other people, for the sole reason of being different.
I’ll be inspired by everything, and I will steal whatever I like; but you’ll only ever get my dead corpse to join your writers' club.
