(no subject)
Nov. 17th, 2013 03:41 pmWriting to this journal has begun to feel like very bizarre therapy.
I've been sitting in a coffee shop for the last hour attempting to write. Yuletide, personal writing, anything. The garbage that's been coming out of my fingertips has mostly been meta: who what why questions, or dialogue drippings; nothing substantive.
The magic of watching non-RL stuff erupt out in a fit of verbal heaving is the feeling of certain detachment. It feels like painting: to some degree, you can analyse your aesthetic choices, pick apart where the anatomy looks wrong. With writing, it's like looking at the anatomy of your thinking and being able to see where you're going in circles.
Writing fiction really punishes disinterest. There are so many things you can fake interest IRL because it's the done thing: "I want to code" or "I like Plato"; but to write fic?
It's strange to come back, re-read old writing, and think I sound like myself when my writing isn't, in the literal sense, a journal of who I was. But it's probably the truest image I have out there of what it sounds like in my head when I'm creative, productive, happy.
Second observation: the people I've met in fandom, years ago and even just yesterday, continue to be some of the truest and most genuine people I've met. It's sometimes crushing to think of what anonymity has done for honesty (as opposed to what it allows for trolling), and what a generational shift towards a transparent, quasi-reflective digital Real Life Online for everyone can do to that. It feels like shining a very bright light onto a surface; blasting out all the contours into a blinding and flat white.
I have written 500 words and read 3 books in the last two weeks. That's more than I've done in a long, long while.
I've been sitting in a coffee shop for the last hour attempting to write. Yuletide, personal writing, anything. The garbage that's been coming out of my fingertips has mostly been meta: who what why questions, or dialogue drippings; nothing substantive.
The magic of watching non-RL stuff erupt out in a fit of verbal heaving is the feeling of certain detachment. It feels like painting: to some degree, you can analyse your aesthetic choices, pick apart where the anatomy looks wrong. With writing, it's like looking at the anatomy of your thinking and being able to see where you're going in circles.
Writing fiction really punishes disinterest. There are so many things you can fake interest IRL because it's the done thing: "I want to code" or "I like Plato"; but to write fic?
It's strange to come back, re-read old writing, and think I sound like myself when my writing isn't, in the literal sense, a journal of who I was. But it's probably the truest image I have out there of what it sounds like in my head when I'm creative, productive, happy.
Second observation: the people I've met in fandom, years ago and even just yesterday, continue to be some of the truest and most genuine people I've met. It's sometimes crushing to think of what anonymity has done for honesty (as opposed to what it allows for trolling), and what a generational shift towards a transparent, quasi-reflective digital Real Life Online for everyone can do to that. It feels like shining a very bright light onto a surface; blasting out all the contours into a blinding and flat white.
I have written 500 words and read 3 books in the last two weeks. That's more than I've done in a long, long while.