Max: Brain Dump 1100
I am writing this because I want to write it. I feel no commitment to it beyond that.
Just shy of two weeks ago, I decided that it was time to start writing. I was watching an episode of CrankyGeeks.com that had Neil Gaiman as the guest. He said something that I have heard many writers say many times before. He said that if you want to write, you should write. Write every day. Most of what you write will be useless, but write and keep writing until you write something good. Genius is the small flash that comes in the middle of the daily slog. One has to have that daily slog to get those flashes. Unlike most authors, I decided to put that slog up for people to read.
It's not always easy. Sometimes I stare at the screen for a half hour or more, my brain in a perfect zen state of emptiness. Other times, I pound at the keyboard as ideas come faster than I can type. Sometimes, like today, it's the first thing I do. Sometimes, like last night, it's my final struggle before going to bed. Once I even skipped it because my wife is more important to me. But I do it because at the end of 1000 words I feel good. It's not so much a sense of accomplishment as a sense of well-being, a sense that my world is a little more right that it had been 1000 words ago. I am well aware that most of what I write is crap and in dire need of proofreading, but still I feel good.
Almost ten years ago I decided I would sit down and write every day. At the end of two months, I had the first draft of a short, crappy novel. When I finished, I let myself take a break. With rare exception, that break has lasted until two weeks ago. Part of that was depression robbing me of motivation. But it was also fear. I feared the blank page. I feared I was not worthy to fill it. Most of the time when I sat down to write, I psyched myself out. Every word would get censored before I had the chance to type it. So I began to tell myself that I didn't have the time to write, that I would write later. It took until two weeks ago for "later" to come.
At first my only goal was to get words on the screen. I wanted to put my head-meat on notice that I am going to write every day and that it needed to step up. It didn't matter what I wrote about. I didn't even think about proofreading. I just wrote and what came out got written down. I did manage one piece of fiction. Bitter satire of the corporate world is a specialty of mine. It's not that I think all corporations are inherently evil. My mother runs a corporation. It's a small one, but it's still a corporation. However, I have been screwed by some corporations and am often baffled by the mentality of some people within certain corporations I have dealt with. It's good fodder.
Today I will be taking it up to the next level. It's a little after 0800 CDT as I write this. But I am not going to post it until later. I can never proofread something I have just written. When it's fresh in my mind, I can't see the flaws. So I am going to wait at least a few hours then read this over and try to spiff it up. I would like to get into the habit of proofreading as I go so I intend to slowly cut back on the time between writing and proofreading until they occur at the same time. For now, it will have to wait.
I also will try to make these brain dumps more internally incoherent. I want to sustain an idea through a full 1000 words. Perhaps I will even write longer pieces that take more than one Brain Dump to get out. Some will be fiction. Some will be opinion. And some, as a matter of course, will be random meanderings because that's all I could manage to get together that day. But the goal is to keep writing and keep getting better.
I think I was ten years old when it first occurred to me that I would like to write. I though that it would be an ego boost to see my name on a book in a store. A few years later my eighth-grade teacher told me I should write. She was an old-school Irish Catholic nun who did not hand out compliments lightly. In fact, coming from her it was almost as much an order as it was a compliment. Back then, and for some time after, I felt that I should not bother writing anything that was not instant genius. The few projects I started were crap, as one would expect. But back then it didn't occur to me that a writer could rewrite and revise. Much less did it occur that a writer writes more crap than not. But I didn't know that, so I gave up and figured that as I got older and more educated that my writing would magically become good.
Now, I know you have to move a lot of dirt to get to the gold. Sometimes you move that dirt and don't find any gold at all. But if you want that gold, you need to grab a shovel and you dig until you find it. That is what I am doing here. So far I have managed to dig more of a ditch than a mine. But if I keep digging, I just might find a vein. Even if I don't, I enjoy the digging.
I mean, I don't really enjoy digging. It's back-breaking, filthy work and those who do it have my respect. I was using digging as a metaphor for writing. I wanted you to know that in case you thought I was offering to dig a ditch for you or something. I respect ditch diggers, but I really don't want to be one. Except metaphorically.
Just shy of two weeks ago, I decided that it was time to start writing. I was watching an episode of CrankyGeeks.com that had Neil Gaiman as the guest. He said something that I have heard many writers say many times before. He said that if you want to write, you should write. Write every day. Most of what you write will be useless, but write and keep writing until you write something good. Genius is the small flash that comes in the middle of the daily slog. One has to have that daily slog to get those flashes. Unlike most authors, I decided to put that slog up for people to read.
It's not always easy. Sometimes I stare at the screen for a half hour or more, my brain in a perfect zen state of emptiness. Other times, I pound at the keyboard as ideas come faster than I can type. Sometimes, like today, it's the first thing I do. Sometimes, like last night, it's my final struggle before going to bed. Once I even skipped it because my wife is more important to me. But I do it because at the end of 1000 words I feel good. It's not so much a sense of accomplishment as a sense of well-being, a sense that my world is a little more right that it had been 1000 words ago. I am well aware that most of what I write is crap and in dire need of proofreading, but still I feel good.
Almost ten years ago I decided I would sit down and write every day. At the end of two months, I had the first draft of a short, crappy novel. When I finished, I let myself take a break. With rare exception, that break has lasted until two weeks ago. Part of that was depression robbing me of motivation. But it was also fear. I feared the blank page. I feared I was not worthy to fill it. Most of the time when I sat down to write, I psyched myself out. Every word would get censored before I had the chance to type it. So I began to tell myself that I didn't have the time to write, that I would write later. It took until two weeks ago for "later" to come.
At first my only goal was to get words on the screen. I wanted to put my head-meat on notice that I am going to write every day and that it needed to step up. It didn't matter what I wrote about. I didn't even think about proofreading. I just wrote and what came out got written down. I did manage one piece of fiction. Bitter satire of the corporate world is a specialty of mine. It's not that I think all corporations are inherently evil. My mother runs a corporation. It's a small one, but it's still a corporation. However, I have been screwed by some corporations and am often baffled by the mentality of some people within certain corporations I have dealt with. It's good fodder.
Today I will be taking it up to the next level. It's a little after 0800 CDT as I write this. But I am not going to post it until later. I can never proofread something I have just written. When it's fresh in my mind, I can't see the flaws. So I am going to wait at least a few hours then read this over and try to spiff it up. I would like to get into the habit of proofreading as I go so I intend to slowly cut back on the time between writing and proofreading until they occur at the same time. For now, it will have to wait.
I also will try to make these brain dumps more internally incoherent. I want to sustain an idea through a full 1000 words. Perhaps I will even write longer pieces that take more than one Brain Dump to get out. Some will be fiction. Some will be opinion. And some, as a matter of course, will be random meanderings because that's all I could manage to get together that day. But the goal is to keep writing and keep getting better.
I think I was ten years old when it first occurred to me that I would like to write. I though that it would be an ego boost to see my name on a book in a store. A few years later my eighth-grade teacher told me I should write. She was an old-school Irish Catholic nun who did not hand out compliments lightly. In fact, coming from her it was almost as much an order as it was a compliment. Back then, and for some time after, I felt that I should not bother writing anything that was not instant genius. The few projects I started were crap, as one would expect. But back then it didn't occur to me that a writer could rewrite and revise. Much less did it occur that a writer writes more crap than not. But I didn't know that, so I gave up and figured that as I got older and more educated that my writing would magically become good.
Now, I know you have to move a lot of dirt to get to the gold. Sometimes you move that dirt and don't find any gold at all. But if you want that gold, you need to grab a shovel and you dig until you find it. That is what I am doing here. So far I have managed to dig more of a ditch than a mine. But if I keep digging, I just might find a vein. Even if I don't, I enjoy the digging.
I mean, I don't really enjoy digging. It's back-breaking, filthy work and those who do it have my respect. I was using digging as a metaphor for writing. I wanted you to know that in case you thought I was offering to dig a ditch for you or something. I respect ditch diggers, but I really don't want to be one. Except metaphorically.
posted by Max Dobberstein at 10/23/2006 11:37:00 AM
2 Comments:
thank you, I like to write too, forgot about that bit about most of what one writes is crap,but it can be revised, I've been waiting for that bit of instant genius, for my writing to magically become good, off to do my own 1000 words now, but again, Thanks
Anytime.
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