Comfort writing
I had a moment today. It's one of those things that's almost impossible to write about without sounding pretentious or like I'm trying to manufacture a deep pithy moment so I seem like someone who has moments like that instead of what I am, which is a regular person who yells at the screen during Project Runway and obsesses over finding the perfect black ankle boots. So I'm just going to go for it, be honest, and if I sound like a pretentious douchebag, well, that's just too damn bad.
Since my surgery, I have not been writing.
Strike that. I have been writing a lot. I wrote over 250,000 words in the past year. But not the writing I want and need to be doing. I've retreated into easy, fun writing. Comfort writing. I've been doing the writer's equivalent of living on cereal and mac & cheese instead of putting in the time to cook well-balanced meals that are healthy but delicious. There hasn't been as much room in my head for difficult, demanding creativity as there used to be when I didn't pay much attention to myself, my physical self, and how I was existing in the world, which was "with difficulty."
Ergo, comfort writing.
I have not been writing the sequel to Zero. I want to. My initial idea for it was unsuitable and had to be scrapped and I don't have another. I have not been writing Third. I have not been writing any of the other ideas I've had that I want to start.
I've opened the files and stared at them. I've banged out a few hundred words only to delete them later. I've taken refuge in fun writing.
Today on my lunch break, I was finishing "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet," the latest book by the brilliant David Mitchell, one of my favorite authors. I have been up and down with this book, alternatively thinking it was amazing and that it was a real hard slog, but I was very near the end and I was back around to "amazing." I was reading fast because it was a taut, dramatic scene and I wanted to finish the book before my lunchtime reading was over.
Then I came to one line, and my eyes screeched to a halt.
His body pushes aside drapes of hushed air.
A random line in the middle of a paragraph. A transitional line. Not a throaway line, because Mitchell doesn't write throwaway lines, but not a line with a lot of narrative weight. It is simply a short sentence describing the steps of a feudal Japanese magistrate as he crosses a room, on his way to play one final game of Go with his nemesis, after which he will commit ritual suicide.
I read it, and I read it again, and I felt this knot in my stomach, because it was so damn good. It's eight words and it conveys so much, it's a sensory image and it has power, and I don't know how he does that. And he does it all the fricking time. I got a little choked up, ridiculous as that sounds, because when you see a master working in the medium you're trying to just be competent in, it's emotional on several levels, not all of them pleasant. It's inspirational and discouraging at the same time.
But I came home and I opened up Third and I started writing on it. I might be writing crap, but it's not comfort writing.
Since my surgery, I have not been writing.
Strike that. I have been writing a lot. I wrote over 250,000 words in the past year. But not the writing I want and need to be doing. I've retreated into easy, fun writing. Comfort writing. I've been doing the writer's equivalent of living on cereal and mac & cheese instead of putting in the time to cook well-balanced meals that are healthy but delicious. There hasn't been as much room in my head for difficult, demanding creativity as there used to be when I didn't pay much attention to myself, my physical self, and how I was existing in the world, which was "with difficulty."
Ergo, comfort writing.
I have not been writing the sequel to Zero. I want to. My initial idea for it was unsuitable and had to be scrapped and I don't have another. I have not been writing Third. I have not been writing any of the other ideas I've had that I want to start.
I've opened the files and stared at them. I've banged out a few hundred words only to delete them later. I've taken refuge in fun writing.
Today on my lunch break, I was finishing "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet," the latest book by the brilliant David Mitchell, one of my favorite authors. I have been up and down with this book, alternatively thinking it was amazing and that it was a real hard slog, but I was very near the end and I was back around to "amazing." I was reading fast because it was a taut, dramatic scene and I wanted to finish the book before my lunchtime reading was over.
Then I came to one line, and my eyes screeched to a halt.
His body pushes aside drapes of hushed air.
A random line in the middle of a paragraph. A transitional line. Not a throaway line, because Mitchell doesn't write throwaway lines, but not a line with a lot of narrative weight. It is simply a short sentence describing the steps of a feudal Japanese magistrate as he crosses a room, on his way to play one final game of Go with his nemesis, after which he will commit ritual suicide.
I read it, and I read it again, and I felt this knot in my stomach, because it was so damn good. It's eight words and it conveys so much, it's a sensory image and it has power, and I don't know how he does that. And he does it all the fricking time. I got a little choked up, ridiculous as that sounds, because when you see a master working in the medium you're trying to just be competent in, it's emotional on several levels, not all of them pleasant. It's inspirational and discouraging at the same time.
But I came home and I opened up Third and I started writing on it. I might be writing crap, but it's not comfort writing.