rollercoaster of indefinite stupid

[dubdobdee]

all year i have veered -- almost daily -- between gung-ho eager and listlessly blocked: some of this i imagine is the aftershock of dad dying

anyway i got some good tidying and re-archiving in yesterday (plenty more to do): today at work i plan to run out various rock-writing type pieces old and new -- and immediately the idea of this freezes me up a bit... i get a kind of subsonic dread that says "not yet ready to engage", which one way and another i've had whispering at me since i left the wire -- why not, exactly? what is it i need to immerse myself in before i read a piece by caitlin moran about lady gaga ffs

standard pattern:

a: have idea
b: read everything written about everything ever, then think about the stuff that should have been written but hasn't been
c: write up idea

very obviously (b) is the step i ALWAYS have to short-circuit when getting things done* -- i once said to my friend amanda that i get a kind of gloom when i go into a big bookshops bcz of all the books i'd like to read and want to and probably a need to; she said -- kindly and head-swellingly -- that i'd certainly read more of them than anyone else in the shop, but true or not that's kind of not the point

*wordlength and deadlines operate one level of triage; actual focus on the material in question operates another -- it's what i like about film reviews and dislike about "think pieces" i've generated myself

Comments

[mrs-leroy-brown.livejournal.com]

aww, guy! I think have LOTS of omg so interesting projects on the go is also being listless-causing, yes? Anyway if you fancy another 'get stuff DONE' day I'm totes up for that cos it really helped me. When Kat's out of work she said she'd also like to join in on this kind of thing.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

no i totally want more of same! this was literally about being faced with

1: go to webpage
2: print out webpage

and realising i was prevaricating -- as if even printing out a page committed me to something i feared

[(Anonymous)]

1～2週間以内に必ず東京に来る？

[http://users.livejournal.com/xyzzzz__/]

Looks like what you're saying is you need to work in another music mag who will deadline you? Maybe I'm also using your post to vent frustration at not having the desire to read music mags anymore...

[koganbot]

(1) Move to Denver
(2) On _______day in the week, or _____ and _____ and _____day of the week, at __ o'clock, you and I and possibly my friend(s) ______ (and ______) go to St. Mark's Coffeehouse (17th Ave. between Race and Vine); you bring no books with you. We stay there for ______ hours. We all take out our pens and papers (laptops disallowed unless we all pledge not to go online). You write down your ideas, maybe putting notes in margin that say "Fact check this at some point," or "figure out sometime in the future if this is what s/he is really saying, or ask Frank, who will volunteer his opinion anyway, unasked, so I don't have to worry about this until he does, actually."

Hope that helps.

What I'm saying - I've said this before - is that the way to short circuit (b) is simply not to do it, or at any rate reverse (b) and (c), so write a full draft before commencing your reading. (My friend JC says that all writing is rewriting anyway. This just makes it official.)

[(Anonymous)]

once you get a taste of the idea that everyone is wrong, or that everything is wrong, or the world is wrong, it's hard not to try to make every bout of writing a successful effort at taking account of, and possibly correcting, all of the wrongs, sometimes just by only saying things that are right.

just picking interlocutors and trying to focus on the real effects of particular conversations is a way to counteract the burdensome feeling that keeps one from writing, but of course then one tries to pick one's interlocutors in the same way.


j.