My severe lack of productivity
I can't seem to get anything done today.
I'm sitting in the library right now; I've been here for about... *checks clock* four hours. I've been working for three of those hours, and once I get off the computer I plan to work another hour. So I guess the statement above is somewhat false, as I have been getting things done. But not all the time "working" has been spent actually getting books on shelves. Some of the time has been spent finding a Sherlock Holmes dictionary, which I really don't need, I mean, I've never had trouble understanding the stories, I don't need a complete volume of the termes used by Conan Doyle--but I spent some time looking at that all the same. While I was shelving. Which slowed down the process somewhat. So did finding perhaps twenty books on the SciFi reshelving shelf, meaning that I obviously had to shelve them, except that twenty books doesn't really warrant a cart, meaning that I was just grabbing books, running all the way to SciFi Land, and then running back for more. It's all perfectly justifiable, and it is working, but I'm still not working up to potential.
I also haven't been doing any good writing lately. I've been asked for a sequel to the fairy tale that I wrote a while ago--you know, the sarcastic one that I posted with my very first post? Yeah, that one. Well, I had an idea for a sleeping beauty spin-off, and I sort of mapped it out in my head, and I sat down at my computer and looked for the story and found only an empty space in my head tinged with the lingering scent of sarcasm.
That seems to happen to me a lot. A plot bunny will suggest itself to me, I'll develop it a little, I'll start writing, and right when I'm really getting into it the plot bunny hopps away, leaving me pounding the keyboard and shouting after it. My computer is full of half finished projects. Well, my dad's computer. Which is in Italy at the moment. So I can't even stare hopelessly at the screen while reading and rereading everything I'd written before.
One would think that, in a place as intellectually stimulating as the library, ideas should be coming in droves. Unfortunately that is not the case; in fact the opposite is true, as I will be thinking of a good plot, absently read the back of a novel, and realise that this author has already done that plot, and the same is probably true of several other authors in the library. Of course, one cannot hope to write something entirely original, as one cannot help but be affected by outside influences. In fact, being a fanfic/parody writer, I cannot hope to write anything completely original; a requirement is that it is based off of something. Like The Princess in the Tower. It could be argued that that is an original story, but I couldn't have written it without the influence of hundreds of serious fairy tales to give me the idea in the first place. Plots are tricky. I don't think I've written anything really good and original in a while.
The library is also less than intellectually stimulating because someone's kid is screaming in the main lobby. It sounds like someone stepping on a cat crossed with Sherlock Holmes on one of his moody days with his violin. How one little kid can make so much noise is completely beyond me.
Well, it's about time for me to return to work, I suppose... Shelving nonfiction, reshelving books that idiots have just shoved into the wrong places, etc. I love my job, but I'm invariably shocked at how much idiocy there is involved. I never would have guessed.
I'm sitting in the library right now; I've been here for about... *checks clock* four hours. I've been working for three of those hours, and once I get off the computer I plan to work another hour. So I guess the statement above is somewhat false, as I have been getting things done. But not all the time "working" has been spent actually getting books on shelves. Some of the time has been spent finding a Sherlock Holmes dictionary, which I really don't need, I mean, I've never had trouble understanding the stories, I don't need a complete volume of the termes used by Conan Doyle--but I spent some time looking at that all the same. While I was shelving. Which slowed down the process somewhat. So did finding perhaps twenty books on the SciFi reshelving shelf, meaning that I obviously had to shelve them, except that twenty books doesn't really warrant a cart, meaning that I was just grabbing books, running all the way to SciFi Land, and then running back for more. It's all perfectly justifiable, and it is working, but I'm still not working up to potential.
I also haven't been doing any good writing lately. I've been asked for a sequel to the fairy tale that I wrote a while ago--you know, the sarcastic one that I posted with my very first post? Yeah, that one. Well, I had an idea for a sleeping beauty spin-off, and I sort of mapped it out in my head, and I sat down at my computer and looked for the story and found only an empty space in my head tinged with the lingering scent of sarcasm.
That seems to happen to me a lot. A plot bunny will suggest itself to me, I'll develop it a little, I'll start writing, and right when I'm really getting into it the plot bunny hopps away, leaving me pounding the keyboard and shouting after it. My computer is full of half finished projects. Well, my dad's computer. Which is in Italy at the moment. So I can't even stare hopelessly at the screen while reading and rereading everything I'd written before.
One would think that, in a place as intellectually stimulating as the library, ideas should be coming in droves. Unfortunately that is not the case; in fact the opposite is true, as I will be thinking of a good plot, absently read the back of a novel, and realise that this author has already done that plot, and the same is probably true of several other authors in the library. Of course, one cannot hope to write something entirely original, as one cannot help but be affected by outside influences. In fact, being a fanfic/parody writer, I cannot hope to write anything completely original; a requirement is that it is based off of something. Like The Princess in the Tower. It could be argued that that is an original story, but I couldn't have written it without the influence of hundreds of serious fairy tales to give me the idea in the first place. Plots are tricky. I don't think I've written anything really good and original in a while.
The library is also less than intellectually stimulating because someone's kid is screaming in the main lobby. It sounds like someone stepping on a cat crossed with Sherlock Holmes on one of his moody days with his violin. How one little kid can make so much noise is completely beyond me.
Well, it's about time for me to return to work, I suppose... Shelving nonfiction, reshelving books that idiots have just shoved into the wrong places, etc. I love my job, but I'm invariably shocked at how much idiocy there is involved. I never would have guessed.