the word studio notebook
- Here's the blog, The Gist.
- Here's my website, wordstudio.net.
- Here you can read my work.
- Here are my Haiku Year posts.
- Here's a random post.
Posts tagged writing life
It’s true that I sometimes consider a piece of writing released online to be a modest failure if it doesn’t get enough comments or appreciation from readers. This is a failing not of the writing, however, but of me. The thing exists where before it did not exist. That’s the prize. Being created is the start, being read is fulfillment, being liked is a bonus. Not all of these are under my control. On with the next thing and the next and the next.
Sometimes I think that if I don’t write stuff for me during the week, I’ll get edgy and frustrated. Thing is, it should all be for me on some level. Otherwise, how the hell can I tell if it’s any good or not?
That Exists Today That Didn’t Yesterday
After a weekend of tripping over every word, getting tangled in sentences, and being setback by the paragraph due to my own frustration with my own writing and creative decisions, I am taking some time to work on other words my brain has been trying to sort out for 50 hours. I am going to take the progress I can make in lieu of the progress I demand. I’m putting those words down on paper (well, “paper”) so I can stop fretting about them, dwelling in them like a mouse in a boot, and then move on to what needs to be done.
This is like eating my dessert first, frankly. Yet if I don’t make the time for these words, they’ll never get written. And it’s not the waiting for a chance to write them that’s driving me crazy, I don’t think; it’s the heavy suspicion that I’ll never be done with work and so never get to write these words—these words for me—otherwise.
As I wrote to a friend the other day, the list of things I want to write is longer than my life expectancy. Thus, if I keep deferring the things I’m trying to write for me, for the sake of the writer I want to be, for the projects that might not otherwise get written, they’ll never get written and I’ll always be on some verge.
This is not a new revelation, of course. It’s an old one. I have it rather a lot.
This is me invoking my right to write, for myself, for a little bit. “Anything that exists today that didn’t yesterday is something,” I wrote on Twitter.
Then it’s back to work.
John Updike telling Terry Gross why he once called interviews ‘a form to be loathed.’ [complete interview here] (via nprfreshair)
Thinking about this today, all day, before my interview tonight.
113 notes (via nprfreshair)
Tell us a story about a con! Please?
This one time, early in the 21st century, I pretended to be a professional writer for more than a decade. Is that what you mean?
(Edit: Truth is, I find it hard to write stories about cons because I assume my readers are smarter than me and it’s hard to cococt a good scam tale in that environment. Still, I’d love to.)
Cut from another post and in search of a home
This is where I search my soul when, by “search my soul,” I mean ransack my scarred and shivered psychic flotsam like an amnesiac stranded on a beach, going through wet luggage for some sign of just who the fuck I am.
This has come across my dashboard a couple of times now. I keep thinking about it. I’m reblogging it, finally, as a gesture. I keep thinking about it.
2,731 notes (via unchartedbooks & nevver)
