Thursday, September 24, 2009

Writing for Writing's Sake

The problem, as I've mentioned before, is the fact that I have too many ideas, too many stories to share, too many tales to tell, and I don't have enough time to actually write them down. I can't say "pen them down," because I don't use pens when writing, and I can't say "pin them down," because that does not really make sense in an electronic word-processing formatting sense. But, in my moments of free time, or in the moments when the writing is calling me, or in the moments when I think of something that I should add to one of my numerous stories, I pull up the document and let the creativity flow.

Sadly, this seems to happen when I have no desire to write, and then the words dry up and refuse to appear on my screen. I have the idea and I know what I want to say, but I can't figure out how to write it. Blinded by the light, do ya kennit? Soon I find myself just writing for writing's sake, putting words down that I know I'll delete, possibly even before I finish the sentence. Can a series of random sentences correlate and work together? I feel myself slipping into the random...

A glass of tea sits on a folded white napkin on my desk, exerting a sweat ring on the figure that's drawn on the face of the napkin. It's been dark and overcast for a while now, making me really want a hot cup of coffee. My friend came over last night. We worked three crossword puzzles, and they were all ridiculously tough. I worked a total of six crosswords yesterday, but I didn't solve them all. I made a homemade pizza last night, using the stoneware my wife got from Pampered Chef, and it was superb. There is a tree, blowing in the gales, wishing it could fly away. To uproot and experience the joys of flight. Wouldn't the birds and squirrels be surprised, to find their home flying around in the sky. I hate it when I take a drink (of the tea on the napkin) and constrict my throat too early, coughing and spilling some. Bah! There is no sanctuary, and there can be only one, and I bet it's not Mega-Man, Cloud Strife, or Link. Yes. But if it could be, then it'd definitely be Link. Alas, there can be only one...

Eventually I feel that if I've written a paragraph of substantial stuff, then I'm satisfied. But only on the days when the right juices refuse to flow. On some days I can crank out a few thousand words with no problem, but I think it depends on the Logan's Writing Ratio, a number that is defined as

LWR=(Cloud Cover + Hours of Sleep + Mood)/(Music Playing on iPod).

If this ratio equals one (LWR=1), then productivity is high, whereas a low LWR results in pointless sentences and obscure wording. Of course, it's pretty tough to quantify some of the variables of the ratio, especially the ones that are constantly changing, but once you get the hang of it it's not too bad.

With all of this, I currently am sitting at a LWR=0.2, which is okay for the moment. I have other things I need to do. I'm going to try to get a large chunk of the project I'm working on at work done. I still have a fresh apple to eat and around 16oz of home-brew tea to drink. I have a new day of crosswords. I have the FlashForward pilot to watch tonight, and a new episode of The Office and Community (but no 30 Rock yet). Aye, today should be productive. And enough productivity helps take the thoughts away from the troubling news I've recently heard, which I'll ask you to pray about, though you don't know what it is. I'll say thankee-sai, may it do ya fine.

2 comments:

Krista said...

I love homemade pizza cooked on stoneware! Yummy stuff! I hope this writers block , if you'd call it that, gets better!


All the bast!

David Wagner said...

When I was at my most productive, working on my novel, I would do an exercise every day for 15 minutes before working on the novel, and it can best be described as stream-of-conscious journaling. I would literally write whatever was on the tip of my head, go go go, without looking back or editing or even doing carriage returns. Just one big block of text. It really helped me to unplug and get rid of the surface junk that had accumulated, which was taking my mind off of focusing on the novel.

Anyway, it was very helpful. Learned it in a book called The Artist's Way. Thought I'd throw it out there.

Anyway, good luck, and I'll be praying for your undisclosed troubling news. I know how that can be.