On being a writer...
Being a writer means various things. Sometimes it means you are deep into a 3 or 4 part series about Kindle and censorship when other writing projects need to take center stage and so, suddenly, you are exhausted and it is two days past when you said part three would be "continuing tomorrow..."
Today it also means you still have a very important project front and center on your desk and yet you're still really exhausted as well as feeling this annoying tension across the full length of your shoulders and in your neck. You squirm a lot and try to stretch while remaining seated at the laptop but it does absolutely nothing to help this tension. You are reading, reading, and re-reading everything you've written thus far on your important project; waiting for feedback, input, advice, from someone who is editing this for you as you go along.
You check email, check email, check email, and -- yes -- check email, but the feedback, input, advice is still not in your inbox, so you feel stymied about proceeding.
Being a writer means you love that word "stymied" and are so glad to have true, legitimate reasons to use it!
You sip at your 4th cup of coffee, which is kind of cold, and you wonder if perhaps this "4th cup" is abetting the annoying tension problem, but you don't stop sipping the coffee because that would only make sense. While being a great writer often leads to things that make alarming sense in the end, it doesn't mean that the road there is paved with sensical things.
You keep re-reading your work thus far.
You keep checking email.
You re-read again. OH! Wait!! What's that -- you've actually changed a word. Yes, a complete and total word change has been made so now you are officially revising.
This revision has exhausted you so you suddenly realize you have to Google an answer to the question: how do I use my rice cooker as a slow cooker?
Without warning, you find yourself on Roger Ebert's blog post from November 1, 2008 and you are enjoying it enormously! It's all about using your rice cooker (that is sitting in your kitchen cupboard and has never been touched) for everything you could ever hope to cook. Don't look at the links down the right side of the page, though, because those links look alarmingly like they will tell you about all kinds of creative people who actually got their work done and who didn't waste time googling shit about rice cookers. Even so much as glancing at those links will only add to the tension problem you are already annoyed by in your shoulders and neck. If you can make it to the bottom of Roger Ebert's blog post from 3 1/2 years ago without giving into feelings of guilt that make you close down your browser and get back to revising or perhaps even writing fresh stuff, you will encounter this really cute short subject film that won a high school short subject film festival in 2007: The Legend of the Legendary Rice Cooker.
I regale you with that cute movie here:
Today it also means you still have a very important project front and center on your desk and yet you're still really exhausted as well as feeling this annoying tension across the full length of your shoulders and in your neck. You squirm a lot and try to stretch while remaining seated at the laptop but it does absolutely nothing to help this tension. You are reading, reading, and re-reading everything you've written thus far on your important project; waiting for feedback, input, advice, from someone who is editing this for you as you go along.
You check email, check email, check email, and -- yes -- check email, but the feedback, input, advice is still not in your inbox, so you feel stymied about proceeding.
Being a writer means you love that word "stymied" and are so glad to have true, legitimate reasons to use it!
You sip at your 4th cup of coffee, which is kind of cold, and you wonder if perhaps this "4th cup" is abetting the annoying tension problem, but you don't stop sipping the coffee because that would only make sense. While being a great writer often leads to things that make alarming sense in the end, it doesn't mean that the road there is paved with sensical things.
You keep re-reading your work thus far.
You keep checking email.
You re-read again. OH! Wait!! What's that -- you've actually changed a word. Yes, a complete and total word change has been made so now you are officially revising.
This revision has exhausted you so you suddenly realize you have to Google an answer to the question: how do I use my rice cooker as a slow cooker?
Without warning, you find yourself on Roger Ebert's blog post from November 1, 2008 and you are enjoying it enormously! It's all about using your rice cooker (that is sitting in your kitchen cupboard and has never been touched) for everything you could ever hope to cook. Don't look at the links down the right side of the page, though, because those links look alarmingly like they will tell you about all kinds of creative people who actually got their work done and who didn't waste time googling shit about rice cookers. Even so much as glancing at those links will only add to the tension problem you are already annoyed by in your shoulders and neck. If you can make it to the bottom of Roger Ebert's blog post from 3 1/2 years ago without giving into feelings of guilt that make you close down your browser and get back to revising or perhaps even writing fresh stuff, you will encounter this really cute short subject film that won a high school short subject film festival in 2007: The Legend of the Legendary Rice Cooker.
I regale you with that cute movie here:
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