Has anyone noticed how Republican’s tend to resent the wealth of celebrities who espouse leftist ideologies while overlooking the wealth of corporate CEOs: that which is actually effecting their lives.
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“I as a writer definitely procrastinate when it comes to writing. The ideas for the story come so quickly yet the work involved in developing the story is so mundane. Usually I can rectify this by writing with different color pens on different colored paper.
Still, I fall into the mundane quickly. I push myself to research things relevant to the story only to find myself down the rabbit hole of websites that get further away from my initial search finally landing on Facebook.
I think my will power is fleeting when it comes to buckling down and pursuing the passions that would allow me relief from the mundaneness of working for other people. Well that coupled with a minor fear of success and performance anxiety to outdo the book I haven’t written yet.” –Elizibeth
Feel your pain, Elizabeth.It’s not just the tedium that writing can sometimes involve. It’s the fear and dread that comes down to facing the blank page and not knowing whether you’ll be able to fill it with anything meaningful. Therein, lies the value of free writing with no expectations about the quality. This why it is best not to dwell on the book you haven’t written yet, and focus more on breaking that book down to easily managed projects -once again: Hemingway’s 500 words a day.
The other really good advice I got on the matter was from a book about making art. It was critiquing the various myths about art. And the one that really struck me was the myth of art being a mystical activity. At first, this took the fun out of it. But then I realized that looking at art (or any creative act (as a mystical activity can only stifle an artist (especially a young one (since it could leave them with the idea that the only time they should be writing is when they happen to be inspired. And how does one develop the craft of writing doing that? You have to look at it as an act similar to a cabinet maker: an activity that one engages in (inspired or not (because it is what they do. As Picasso said: taste is the enemy of art.
(On a side note: Picasso was an artist and likely not one to haggle too much on the terminology he was using. For instance, he might have recognized that Art is actually a matter of taste since it is the social expression of the creative act subject to public scrutiny. The creative act is the private activity: that which sustains itself through a sense of Play. Art is the public discourse it hopefully evolves into. Therefore, I would (for our purposes (revise his statement to taste is the enemy of the creative act. (
That said, Picasso’s point becomes a two edged sword for us on the boards. We have to be wary here of the instant gratification of instant publication when what we are mainly doing here is the equivalent of the sketches and studies (a form of Play (of an artist working towards a finished piece they hang in a gallery. This is basically a workshop as compared to a platform. And that really becomes a problem when you find out that the more finished piece you developed online is not publishable because most magazines want their content to be seen for the first time. Poetry magazine, for instance, explicitly asks you to confirm that you haven’t published online when you submit.
Still, the draw of it is hard to get beyond. I can hardly write anything without seeing what it looks like on a message board. But I’ve been thinking about putting my vice to work for me and create a completely private board that no one can read but who I invite: those who are interested in developing their private projects. A workshop in the rhizome cafe if you will.