A Sort Of Motivation

Rish and I were recording for an upcoming episode of the show last night. Rish decided that now was a good time to talk a bit more about writing. As you can see if you go through the old posts here, I got really excited about writing recently after reading some of Tobias Buckell's Just A Draft as well as reading Dean Wesley Smith's Killing The Sacred Cows Of Publishing. But recently, things have changed substantially in my life, and I find myself with a lot less time to devote to writing, and without enough motivation to do it either.

After the conversation that Rish and I had the other night though, I felt a little ashamed of myself for giving up. I pulled out my Autism Story (which I still haven't got a title for yet), and read what I'd done so far. I liked it. I think I've done a good job. I did write the thing, though, so my opinion might be skewed. I focused on establishing the world without resorting to any info dumps. I hope I've succeeded, but I guess I won't know until someone other than myself reads it.

I had written 1,817 words so far. I started typing, and after a moment, I had a few hundred more. Then something came up that demanded my attention, and I was pulled away. But for that moment, I was in heaven. It was really enjoyable.

Rish and I talk about one of Dean Wesley Smith's posts on the show. It's the one where he says the idea that writing is hard work is just a myth. Hard work is digging ditches in the hot sun, picking cotton in a field all day, or performing an eight hour surgery on a critically injured patient. Writing is sitting in a comfortable chair, in an air-conditioned room, and making things up. Rish says it is hard work. But it's too much fun to be hard work. None of those other things that I mentioned are fun. But writing is really, really fun. I wish I could figure out what short-circuit in my brain makes me try to avoid it all the time. Because every time I write, I have fun.

To be fair, it is very mentally taxing. And it's not something that you can do well unless you've practiced and practiced and practice (that whole million words of crap thing). But it is fun. I'm going to try to remember that, so that the next time I try to think of something else that I should do instead of writing, I'll pick the fun choice instead.

Now I'm at 1993 words in the story. Another scene, and I'll be done, I think. I'll see if I can whip it out tomorrow (and write that last scene too, heh).